Jenkins Reload Configuration Removes Changes - bash

Question

Currently using Jenkins at my company, I set up a server for all of our engineers to plug in to, in doing so I made some server management jobs to make my life a little easier. One of them was a config editor to edit the $JENKINS_HOME/config.xml file and trigger a configuration reload to reflect the new changes.
However today when I went to go use that job, the changes we no longer taking effect, nor were they shown when ssh'd into the server and cat-ing the config.xml file.
Did some debugging, made sure that the file contents were being replaced correctly, even threw the checks into the build executor to make sure I knew that everything was correct prior to running the reload-configuration command by double checking md5 sums as the entire content is replaced in my script. I even sleep 15-d before the reload so I could cat the config.xml file and ensure my changes are there, and they always are.
However, as soon as the reload command is run, all of my changes are replaced with what the config contents were just before I made my changes (I also confirmed this from md5 sums of the file in my debugging)
Here's the executor of my job if that helps at all:
$CONFIG_FILE is always $JENKINS_HOME/config.xml
#!/bin/bash
set -o pipefail -e -u -x
cp "$CONFIG_FILE" "$WORKSPACE/config_backup.xml"
printf "Creating an AMI profile with these parameters: \n\n\
Config File: | $CONFIG_FILE \n\
AMI ID: | $AMI_ID \n\
Description: | $DESCRIPTION \n\
Instance Type: | $INSTANCE_TYPE \n\
Security Groups: | $SECURITY_GROUPS \n\
Remote Workspace: | $REMOTE_WORKSPACE \n\
Label(s): | $LABELS \n\
Subnet ID: | $SUBNET_ID \n\
IAM Profile: | $IAM_INSTANCE_PROFILE \n\
Instance Tags: | $TAGS \n\
Executors: | $EXECUTORS \
\n\n\
"
new_xml="$(python "$WORKSPACE/<scriptname removed for security reasons>" \
--file $CONFIG_FILE \
--ami $AMI_ID \
--description $DESCRIPTION \
--type $INSTANCE_TYPE \
--security-groups $SECURITY_GROUPS \
--remote-workspace $REMOTE_WORKSPACE \
--labels $LABELS \
--iam-instance-profile $IAM_INSTANCE_PROFILE \
--subnet-id $SUBNET_ID \
--tags $TAGS \
--executors $EXECUTORS)" || true
if [ -z "$new_xml" ]; then
echo "Ran into an error..."
cat "xml_ami_profile_parser.log"
exit 1
fi
echo "setting new config file content..."
echo "$new_xml" > "$CONFIG_FILE"
echo "config file set!"
CONFIG_MD5="$(md5sum "$CONFIG_FILE" | awk '{print $1}')"
NEW_MD5="$(echo "$new_xml" | md5sum | awk '{print $1}')"
printf "comparing MD5 Sums: \n\
[ $CONFIG_MD5 ] \n\
[ $NEW_MD5 ]\n\n"
if [[ "$CONFIG_MD5" != "$NEW_MD5" ]]; then
echo "Config File ($CONFIG_FILE) was not overwritten successfully. Restoring backup..."
cp "$WORKSPACE/config_backup.xml" "$CONFIG_FILE"
exit 1
fi
# use jenkins api user info
USERNAME="$(cat <scriptname removed for security reasons> | awk '{print $8}')"
PASSWORD="$(cat <scriptname removed for security reasons> | awk '{print $9}')"
curl -X POST -u "$USERNAME:$PASSWORD" "<url removed for security reasons>"
sleep 10
NEW_MD5="$(md5sum "$CONFIG_FILE" | awk '{print $1}')"
printf "comparing MD5 Sums: \n\
[ $CONFIG_MD5 ] \n\
[ $NEW_MD5 ]\n\n"
if [[ "$CONFIG_MD5" != "$NEW_MD5" ]]; then
echo "Config file reverted after reload, marking build as error."
exit 1
fi
Any help at all is greatly appreciated!
EDIT:
Here's the common output now and can't get past it:
setting new config file content...
config file set!
comparing MD5 Sums:
[ 58473de6acbb48b2e273e3395e64ed0f ]
[ 58473de6acbb48b2e273e3395e64ed0f ]
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
comparing MD5 Sums:
[ 58473de6acbb48b2e273e3395e64ed0f ]
[ f521cec2a2e376921995f773522f78e1 ]
Config file reverted after reload, marking build as error.
Build step 'Execute shell' marked build as failure
Finished: FAILURE

Answer 1

For everyone coming to this later, I solved my own problem. Jenkins has it's own failsafe to keep uptime but doesn't give you any notice of it doing so. If you replace a config.xml with something that a plugin can't parse correctly (in my case the Amazon EC2 Plugin) then the plugin tells Jenkins that the config file is bad, and Jenkins will revert to the last correct XML file it was using (usually the one it has in memory).
If this happens to you double check that you aren't using special chars.
the offending code in mine was an output of the tags section including html char converted quotations " -> " and the plugin couldn't parse this. It was solely a difference in:
<tags>
<hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
<name>"Email</name>
<value><removed for security reasons>"</value>
</hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
<hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
<name>"Name</name>
<value><removed for security reasons>"</value>
</hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
</tags>
and
<tags>
<hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
<name>Email</name>
<value><removed for security reasons></value>
</hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
<hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
<name>Name</name>
<value><removed for security reasons></value>
</hudson.plugins.ec2.EC2Tag>
</tags>