1. Create an AWS EC2 instance with 1.7GB of memory and a single CPU core. Use 64-bit Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot AMI. Make sure the image has a security group allowing outside access to port 8080.
2. Follow instructions found at http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian/
a) wget -q -O - http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian/jenkins-ci.org.key | sudo apt-key add -
b) Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and append: deb http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian binary/
c) sudo apt-get update
d) sudo apt-get install jenkins
3. Visit port 8080 of the new instance. Jenkins should come up.
4. Click on "Manage Jenkins"
5. Click on "Manage Plugins"
6. Click on the "Available" tab.

Observe that no plugins appears.

While researching this, I discovered errors in /var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log, to the effect of:

SEVERE: Error while serving http://75.101.228.252:8080/updateCenter/byId/default/postBack
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Function$InstanceFunction.invoke(Function.java:288)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Function.bindAndInvoke(Function.java:151)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Function.bindAndInvokeAndServeResponse(Function.java:90)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.MetaClass$1.doDispatch(MetaClass.java:111)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.NameBasedDispatcher.dispatch(NameBasedDispatcher.java:53)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.tryInvoke(Stapler.java:571)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.invoke(Stapler.java:656)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.MetaClass$6.doDispatch(MetaClass.java:241)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.NameBasedDispatcher.dispatch(NameBasedDispatcher.java:53)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.tryInvoke(Stapler.java:571)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.invoke(Stapler.java:656)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.MetaClass$4.doDispatch(MetaClass.java:203)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.NameBasedDispatcher.dispatch(NameBasedDispatcher.java:53)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.tryInvoke(Stapler.java:571)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.invoke(Stapler.java:656)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.invoke(Stapler.java:485)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.service(Stapler.java:159)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:45)
at winstone.ServletConfiguration.execute(ServletConfiguration.java:248)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.forward(RequestDispatcher.java:333)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:376)
at hudson.util.PluginServletFilter$1.doFilter(PluginServletFilter.java:95)
at hudson.util.PluginServletFilter.doFilter(PluginServletFilter.java:87)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:194)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:366)
at hudson.security.csrf.CrumbFilter.doFilter(CrumbFilter.java:47)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:194)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:366)
at hudson.security.ChainedServletFilter$1.doFilter(ChainedServletFilter.java:84)
at hudson.security.ChainedServletFilter.doFilter(ChainedServletFilter.java:76)
at hudson.security.HudsonFilter.doFilter(HudsonFilter.java:164)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:194)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:366)
at hudson.util.CharacterEncodingFilter.doFilter(CharacterEncodingFilter.java:81)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:194)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:366)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.forward(RequestDispatcher.java:331)
at winstone.RequestHandlerThread.processRequest(RequestHandlerThread.java:215)
at winstone.RequestHandlerThread.run(RequestHandlerThread.java:138)
at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
at winstone.BoundedExecutorService$1.run(BoundedExecutorService.java:77)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:679)
Caused by: net.sf.json.JSONException: Unterminated string at character 149109 of {"connectionCheckUrl": "http://www.google.com/", "core":

{"buildDate": "Apr 02, 2012", "name": "core", "sha1": "ZJ3OmLFW+q9udpHX8GCVpC0JO2k=", "url": "http://updates.jenkins-ci.org/download/war/1.458/jenkins.war", "version": "1.458"}

, "id": "default", "plugins": {"AdaptivePlugin": {"buildDate": "Mar 03, 2011", "dependencies": [], "developers": [

{"developerId": "magnayn", "email": "nigel.magnay@gmail.com", "name": "Nigel Magnay"}

], "excerpt": "This (experimental) plug-in exposes the jenkins build extension points (SCM, Build, Publish) to a groovy scripting environment that has some DSL-style extensions for ease of development.", "labels": ["misc", "buildwrapper"], "name": "AdaptivePlugin", ...

and so on.

I'm not completely sure, but it appears that the some package manifest resource may be corrupted, based on the errors I'm seeing.

Thank you for looking into this.