CI/CD Pipeline Randomly Re-Triggers on Sundays Only (Despite No Code Pushes or Cron Jobs)
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4 weeks ago
Problem Description:
I’m facing a very strange issue in our DevOps setup that I’ve never encountered before. We’re running a multi-branch CI/CD pipeline on Jenkins integrated with GitHub and ServiceNow DevOps. For some reason, the pipeline randomly re-triggers itself every Sunday between 2:00–3:00 AM (server local time).
Here’s why it’s weird:
There are no commits, merges, or pushes happening during that window.
We have no scheduled cron jobs or Jenkins timer triggers configured for that time.
The re-run is not a replay of the last build; it’s a fresh execution with a new build ID.
It only happens for the production branch, never for staging or feature branches.
Logs show a generic “Pipeline started” event, but there’s no user, webhook, or SCM trigger attached to it.
ServiceNow DevOps change requests are created automatically as if a deployment was approved, even though no one touched the system.
This behavior has been happening consistently for the past 7 weeks—only on Sundays.
I’ve checked the following:
Jenkins global configuration (no ghost jobs or hidden cron triggers).
GitHub webhooks (no events triggered at that time).
ServiceNow pipeline configuration (no scheduled jobs or approvals).
Server OS cron jobs (none exist).
Timezone/DST issues (not the cause, we’re in UTC).
At this point, it feels like there’s some hidden system job or an integration feedback loop causing these “phantom” Sunday builds, but I can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from.
Has anyone ever seen something like this before CI/CD pipelines triggering on a predictable schedule with no configured triggers? Could it be some obscure ServiceNow DevOps artifact, a Jenkins bug, or maybe even a system-level heartbeat process misfiring?
This is driving me (and my sleep schedule) insane, so any insights would be hugely appreciated.
