title: Jenkins fails to connect to node, no known hosts file was found
body: <p>been banging my head against the wall for over a day now, so maybe someone can point me in the right direction.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Issue: When Jenkins tries to connect to a node, it fails citing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>No Known Hosts file was found at /usr/share/tomcat/.ssh/known_hosts
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Details: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Created a vanilla instance of Jenkins running on tomcat with nginx as the front end. This is within virtualbox.</li>
  <li>JENKINS_HOME=<em>/usr/share/tomcat/webapps/jenkins/.jenkins</em>, set by defining within <em>/etc/sysconfig/tomcat</em></li>
  <li>Node root directory is set as <em>/home/jenkins</em></li>
  <li>Node is a basic centos/nginx server on virtualbox as well.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Troubleshooting:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>(failed) Set selinux to Permissive (for testing)</li>
  <li>(failed) Created a symlink <em>/usr/share/tomcat/.ssh -> /home/jenkins/.ssh</em></li>
  <li>(failed) temporarily set all permissions to 777 on symlink, .ssh dir, and known_hosts file (just for testing)</li>
  <li>(resolved with) Created the file <em>/usr/share/tomcat/.ssh/known_hosts</em>.  Would prefer to use a symlink though.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Questions:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>What else could be preventing tomcat/jenkins from following the symlink and successfully reading known_hosts?</li>
  <li>Why is tomcat/jenkins looking <em>/usr/share/tomcat</em> instead of the Remote root directory of <em>/home/jenkins</em>?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>thanks!</p>