Spring Boot application as a Service

Question

How to configure nicely Spring Boot application packaged as executable jar as a Service in linux system? Is this recommended approach, or should I convert this app to war and install into Tomcat?

Currently I can run Spring boot application from screen session, what is nice, but requires manual start after server reboot.

What I'm looking for is general advice/direction or sample init.d script, if my approach with executable jar is proper.

Answer 1

AS A WINDOWS SERVICE

If you want this to run in windows machine download the winsw.exe from

 http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/com/sun/winsw/winsw/2.1.2/

After that rename it to jar filename (eg: your-app.jar)

winsw.exe -> your-app.exe

Now create an xml file your-app.xml and copy the following content to that

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<service>
     <id>your-app</id>
     <name>your-app</name>
     <description>your-app as a Windows Service</description>
     <executable>java</executable>
     <arguments>-jar "your-app.jar"</arguments>
     <logmode>rotate</logmode>
</service>

Make sure that the exe and xml along with jar in a same folder.

After this open command prompt in Administrator previlege and install it to the windows service.

your-app.exe install
eg -> D:\Springboot\your-app.exe install

If it fails with

Error: Registry key 'Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment'\CurrentVersion' has value '1.8', but '1.7' is required.

Then try the following:

Delete java.exe, javaw.exe and javaws.exe from C:\Windows\System32

thats it :) .

To uninstall the service in windows

your-app.exe uninstall

For see/run/stop service: win+r and type Administrative tools then select the service from that. Then right click choose the option - run / stop

Answer 2

I just got around to doing this myself, so the following is where I am so far in terms of a CentOS init.d service controller script. It's working quite nicely so far, but I'm no leet Bash hacker, so I'm sure there's room for improvement, so thoughts on improving it are welcome.

First of all, I have a short config script /data/svcmgmt/conf/my-spring-boot-api.sh for each service, which sets up environment variables.

#!/bin/bash
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk1.8.0_05/jre
export APP_HOME=/data/apps/my-spring-boot-api
export APP_NAME=my-spring-boot-api
export APP_PORT=40001

I'm using CentOS, so to ensure that my services are started after a server restart, I have a service control script in /etc/init.d/my-spring-boot-api:

#!/bin/bash
# description: my-spring-boot-api start stop restart
# processname: my-spring-boot-api
# chkconfig: 234 20 80

. /data/svcmgmt/conf/my-spring-boot-api.sh

/data/svcmgmt/bin/spring-boot-service.sh $1

exit 0

As you can see, that calls the initial config script to set up environment variables and then calls a shared script which I use for restarting all of my Spring Boot services. That shared script is where the meat of it all can be found:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Service [$APP_NAME] - [$1]"

echo "    JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_HOME"
echo "    APP_HOME=$APP_HOME"
echo "    APP_NAME=$APP_NAME"
echo "    APP_PORT=$APP_PORT"

function start {
    if pkill -0 -f $APP_NAME.jar > /dev/null 2>&1
    then
        echo "Service [$APP_NAME] is already running. Ignoring startup request."
        exit 1
    fi
    echo "Starting application..."
    nohup $JAVA_HOME/bin/java -jar $APP_HOME/$APP_NAME.jar \
        --spring.config.location=file:$APP_HOME/config/   \
        < /dev/null > $APP_HOME/logs/app.log 2>&1 &
}

function stop {
    if ! pkill -0 -f $APP_NAME.jar > /dev/null 2>&1
    then
        echo "Service [$APP_NAME] is not running. Ignoring shutdown request."
        exit 1
    fi

    # First, we will try to trigger a controlled shutdown using 
    # spring-boot-actuator
    curl -X POST http://localhost:$APP_PORT/shutdown < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1

    # Wait until the server process has shut down
    attempts=0
    while pkill -0 -f $APP_NAME.jar > /dev/null 2>&1
    do
        attempts=$[$attempts + 1]
        if [ $attempts -gt 5 ]
        then
            # We have waited too long. Kill it.
            pkill -f $APP_NAME.jar > /dev/null 2>&1
        fi
        sleep 1s
    done
}

case $1 in
start)
    start
;;
stop)
    stop
;;
restart)
    stop
    start
;;
esac
exit 0

When stopping, it will attempt to use Spring Boot Actuator to perform a controlled shutdown. However, in case Actuator is not configured or fails to shut down within a reasonable time frame (I give it 5 seconds, which is a bit short really), the process will be killed.

Also, the script makes the assumption that the java process running the appllication will be the only one with "my-spring-boot-api.jar" in the text of the process details. This is a safe assumption in my environment and means that I don't need to keep track of PIDs.

Answer 3

The following works for springboot 1.3 and above:

As init.d service

The executable jar has the usual start, stop, restart, and status commands. It will also set up a PID file in the usual /var/run directory and logging in the usual /var/log directory by default.

You just need to symlink your jar into /etc/init.d like so

sudo link -s /var/myapp/myapp.jar /etc/init.d/myapp

OR

sudo ln -s ~/myproject/build/libs/myapp-1.0.jar /etc/init.d/myapp_servicename

After that you can do the usual

/etc/init.d/myapp start

Then setup a link in whichever runlevel you want the app to start/stop in on boot if so desired.

---

As a systemd service

To run a Spring Boot application installed in var/myapp you can add the following script in /etc/systemd/system/myapp.service:

[Unit]
Description=myapp
After=syslog.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/var/myapp/myapp.jar

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

---

Reference

http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current-SNAPSHOT/reference/html/deployment-install.html#deployment-service

Answer 4

Following up on Chad's excellent answer, if you get an error of "Error: Could not find or load main class" - and you spend a couple hours trying to troubleshoot it, whether your executing a shell script that starts your java app or starting it from systemd itself - and you know your classpath is 100% correct, e.g. manually running the shell script works as well as running what you have in systemd execstart. Be sure you're running things as the correct user! In my case, I had tried different users, after quite a while of troubleshooting - i finally had a hunch, put root as the user - voila, the app started correctly. After determining it was a wrong user issue, I chown -R user:user the folder and subfolders and the app ran correctly as the specified user and group so no longer needed to run it as root (bad security).

Answer 5

I am trying to make springboot applications that are presented as a "init.d" style shell script with a compressed java application tacked on the end

By symlinking these scripts from /etc/init.d/spring-app to /opt/spring-app.jar and chmod'ing the jar to be executable it is possible to make "/etc/init.d/spring-app start" "/etc/init.d/spring-app stop" and other possibilities like status work

Presumably, as the init.d style scripts from springboot look that they have the neccessary magic strings ( like # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5) chkconfig would be able to add it as a "service"

But I wanted to get it to work with systemd

To make this work I tried many of the recipies in the other answers above but none of them worked for me on Centos 7.2 with Springboot 1.3 Mostly they would start the service but not be able to track the pid

In the end I found the following did work for me, when the /etc/init.d link was in place also. A file similar to the one below should be installed as /usr/lib/systemd/system/spring-app.service

[Unit]
Description=My loverly application
After=syslog.target 

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/spring-app/spring-app.pid
ExecStart=/etc/init.d/spring-app start
SuccessExitStatus=143

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Answer 6

My SysVInit script for Centos 6 / RHEL (not ideal yet). This script requires ApplicationPidListener.

Source of /etc/init.d/app

#!/bin/sh
#
# app Spring Boot Application 
#
# chkconfig:   345 20 80
# description: App Service
#           

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: App
# Required-Start: $local_fs $network
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $network
# Default-Start: 3 4 5 
# Default-Stop: 0 1 2 6
# Short-Description: Application
# Description:      
### END INIT INFO

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

# Source networking configuration.
. /etc/sysconfig/network

exec="/usr/bin/java"
prog="app"
app_home=/home/$prog/
user=$prog

[ -e /etc/sysconfig/$prog ] && . /etc/sysconfig/$prog

lockfile=/var/lock/subsys/$prog    
pid=$app_home/$prog.pid

start() {

    [ -x $exec ] || exit 5
    [ -f $config ] || exit 6
    # Check that networking is up.
    [ "$NETWORKING" = "no" ] && exit 1
    echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
    cd $app_home
    daemon --check $prog --pidfile $pid --user $user $exec $app_args &
    retval=$?
    echo
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lockfile
    return $retval
}

stop() {
    echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
    killproc -p $pid $prog
    retval=$?
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lockfile
    return $retval
}

restart() {
    stop
    start
}

reload() {
    restart
}

force_reload() {
    restart
}

rh_status() {
    status -p $pid $prog
}

rh_status_q() {
    rh_status >/dev/null 2>&1
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        rh_status_q && exit 0
        $1
        ;;
    stop)
        rh_status_q || exit 0
        $1
        ;;
    restart)
        $1
        ;;
    reload)
        rh_status_q || exit 7
        $1
        ;;
    force-reload)
        force_reload
        ;;
    status)
        rh_status
        ;;
    condrestart|try-restart)
        rh_status_q || exit 0
        restart
        ;;
    *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart|condrestart|try-restart|reload|force-reload}"
        exit 2
esac
exit $?

Sample config file /etc/sysconfig/app:

exec=/opt/jdk1.8.0_05/jre/bin/java

user=myuser
app_home=/home/mysuer/

app_args="-jar app.jar"

pid=$app_home/app.pid