CircleCI Server v3.x Managing Orbs

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Tags Server v3.x Server Admin

This section describes how to manage orbs for an installation of server v3.x. Server installations include their own local orb registry. All orbs referenced in configs refer to the orbs in the server orb registry. You are responsible for maintaining orbs. This includes copying orbs from the public registry, updating orbs that may have been previously copied, and registering your company’s private orbs, if they exist.

For information on orbs and related use cases, see the Orb docs.

If you are looking for information on creating an orb, see the Introduction to Authoring Orbs.

Managing Orbs

Orbs are accessed via the CircleCI CLI. Orbs require your CircleCI user to be an admin. They also require a personal API token.

Please ensure that you are using a personal API token generated after your user account is made an admin.

Providing a local repository location using the --host option allows you to access your local server orbs, rather than public cloud orbs. For example, if your server installation is located at http://circleci.somehostname.com, you can run orb commands local to that orb repository by passing --host http://cirlceci.somehostname.com.

List available orbs

To list available public orbs, visit the orb directory, or run the following command:

circleci orb list

To list available private orbs (registered in your local server orb repository), run the following command:

circleci orb list --host <your-server-install-domain> --token <your-api-token>

Import a public orb

To import a public orb to your local server orb repository, run the following command:

circleci admin import-orb <namespace>[<orb-name>[@<orb-version>]] --host <your-server-installation-domain> --token <your-api-token>
You can choose to only specify a namespace, in which case the most recent versions of all orbs in the namespace will be imported.

Fetch a public orb’s updates

To update a public orb in your local server orb repository with a new version, run the following command:

circleci admin import-orb ns[orb[@version]] --host <your server installation domain> --token <your api token>

Using orbs behind a proxy

When importing orbs, the CLI must be able to talk to the server installation and to circleci.com. If you want to do this when using a server installation behind a proxy, the CLI needs to be configured to use the proxy to make those requests to circleci.com, rather than proxying requests to the server install. For example:

export NO_PROXY=server.example.com
export HTTPS_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:3128
export HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:3128
circleci admin import-orb ns[orb[@version]] --host <your server installation domain> --token <your api token>


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