Jenkins "Cannot contact agent" InterruptedException

By Kaveh Alemi·Latchkey

The controller could not reach the agent, so it interrupted the build with an InterruptedException. The connection became unresponsive mid-run.

What this error means

A running stage stops with "Cannot contact agent" followed by a java.lang.InterruptedException. The agent may reconnect later, but the build already failed.

Cannot contact agent-7: java.lang.InterruptedException
Could not connect to agent-7 to send interrupt signal to process

Common causes

Transient network unresponsiveness

The remoting ping timed out due to a slow or dropped network path.

Agent overloaded

High CPU or memory pressure made the agent stop responding to the controller.

Agent host paused or reclaimed

A VM pause, spot reclaim, or container eviction broke contact.

How to fix it

Diagnose and retry

1. Check controller and agent logs for the contact-loss window.
2. Add retry around the affected stage so a transient loss re-runs.

retry(2) { sh 'make test' }

Reduce agent overload

1. Lower executors per agent or add memory so the agent stays responsive.

How to prevent it

• If you run on GitHub Actions, self-healing managed runners such as Latchkey auto-retry transient failures, so a lost-contact blip does not fail the job. On Jenkins, tune executor counts and monitor agent load.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

References

• GitHub Actions documentation