Trouble launching Tomcat as daemon upon Mac startup

[Dave Alvarado]

Hi,

I'm using Tomcat 6.0.26 and Mac 10.6.3. I want to have Tomcat launch as a daemon upon system startup. Per this article -- http://www.malisphoto.com/tips/tomcatonosx.html#Anchor-MODJK, I created the file "org.apache.commons.jsvc.plist" in my /Library/LaunchDaemons folder. However, when I reboot my system, no Tomcat. I must run the script "sh $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh" for it to run. Here are the contents of my "org.apache.commons.jsvc.plist" file:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Disabled</key>
        <false/>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>org.apache.commons.jsvc</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/Library/Tomcat/Home/bin/Tomcat5.sh</string>
                <string>start</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
        <string>/Library/Tomcat/Home</string>
</dict>
</plist>

and the contents of the "/Library/Tomcat/Home/bin/Tomcat5.sh" file ...

#!/bin/sh
##############################################################################
#
#   Copyright 2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
#
#   Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
#   you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
#   You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
#   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
#   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
#   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
#   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
#   limitations under the License.
##############################################################################
#
# Small shell script to show how to start/stop Tomcat using jsvc
# If you want to have Tomcat running on port 80 please modify the server.xml
# file:
#
#    <!-- Define a non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 80 -->
#    <Connector className="org.apache.catalina.connector.http.HttpConnector"
#               port="80" minProcessors="5" maxProcessors="75"
#               enableLookups="true" redirectPort="8443"
#               acceptCount="10" debug="0" connectionTimeout="60000"/>
#
# That is for Tomcat-5.0.x (Apache Tomcat/5.0)
#
# Adapt the following lines to your configuration
JAVA_HOME=/usr 
CATALINA_HOME=/Library/Tomcat/Home 
DAEMON_HOME=$CATALINA_HOME/bin 
TOMCAT_USER=davea 

# for multi instances adapt those lines.
TMP_DIR=/var/tmp
PID_FILE=/var/run/jsvc.pid
CATALINA_BASE=/home/tomcat5/tomcat5/jakarta-tomcat-5/build

CATALINA_OPTS="-Djava.library.path=/home/jfclere/jakarta-tomcat-connectors/jni/native/.libs"
CLASSPATH=\
$JAVA_HOME/lib/tools.jar:\
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/commons-daemon.jar:\
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/bootstrap.jar

case "$1" in
  start)
    #
    # Start Tomcat
    #
    $DAEMON_HOME/jsvc \
    -user $TOMCAT_USER \
    -home $JAVA_HOME \
    -Dcatalina.home=$CATALINA_HOME \
    -Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE \
    -Djava.io.tmpdir=$TMP_DIR \
    -wait 10 \
    -pidfile $PID_FILE \
    -outfile $CATALINA_HOME/logs/catalina.out \
    -errfile '&1' \
    $CATALINA_OPTS \
    -cp $CLASSPATH \
    org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap
    #
    # To get a verbose JVM
    #-verbose \
    # To get a debug of jsvc.
    #-debug \
    exit $?
    ;;

  stop)
    #
    # Stop Tomcat
    #
    $DAEMON_HOME/jsvc \
    -stop \
    -pidfile $PID_FILE \
    org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap
    exit $?
    ;;

  *)
    echo "Usage tomcat.sh start/stop"
    exit 1;;
esac

Thanks for any help or additional troubleshooting tips, - Dave

[Ulf Dittmer]

Not sure what's wrong with that, but this approach works fine for me.

[Dave Alvarado]

Yeah, not sure what that other method was but you're method worked for me. Thanks, -