Expression to get Tomcat pid?

[Dave Alvarado]

Hi,

I'm using Tomcat 6.0.26 for Mac 10.6.3. Does anyone know a shell script expression to get the Tomcat PID and put it in a shell variable? This isn't working for me ...

ps -ef | grep java | grep tomcat | cut -c10-14

I'm starting Tomcat using the provided startup.sh script.

Thanks, - Dave

[Rene Larsen]

You can use this one

CATALINA_PID=`ps -axe | grep tomcat | grep java | awk '{print $1}'`

[Tim Holloway]

Take a look at the catalina.sh script in Tomcat. There's an option labelled CATALINA_PID. In Unix/Linux, the PIDfile holds the PID value for the benefit of the system control scripts.

[Dave Alvarado]

Rene,

Thanks for your reply but the command produced no results. In fact, here is what "ps -axe | grep tomcat" produced ...

davea-mbp2:lvcva davea$ ps -axe | grep tomcat 
13417 ttys000    0:00.00 grep tomcat

ps -ef | grep java produces something a little more interesting ...

65421 13396     1   0   0:01.24 ttys000    0:18.47 /Library/Java/Home/bin/java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/Library/Tomcat/Home/conf/logging.properties -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -DLVCVAConfigurationRoot=/Library/Tomcat/Home/lvcvaConf -Dinversoft.profanity.profiler.enabled=true -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/Library/Tomcat/Home/endorsed -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/Library/Tomcat/Home/endorsed -classpath /Library/Tomcat/Home/bin/bootstrap.jar -Dcatalina.base=/Library/Tomcat/Home -Dcatalina.home=/Library/Tomcat/Home -Djava.io.tmpdir=/Library/Tomcat/Home/temp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start
65421 13420   355   0   0:00.00 ttys000    0:00.00 grep java

Tim,

I looked at catalina.sh and saw references to CATALINA_PID, but I wasn't able to find anywhere where the variable was exported, and indeed, when I open a shell and run "echo $CATALINA_PID", it comes up empty. Do I need to edit catalina.sh in some way? - Dave

[Rene Larsen]

I'm using a Mac as well, but "ps -ef | grep java" result in

rlarsen:~ rlarsen$ ps -ef | grep java
ps: illegal option -- f
usage: ps [-AaCcEefhjlMmrSTvwXx] [-O fmt | -o fmt] [-G gid[,gid...]]
          [-u]
          [-p pid[,pid...]] [-t tty[,tty...]] [-U user[,user...]]
       ps [-L]
rlarsen:~ rlarsen$

But when I'm using "ps -axe | grep java" i'm getting

rlarsen:~ rlarsen$  ps -axe | grep java  
  321   ??  S      0:04.13 /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Home/bin/java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/Users/rlarsen/JavaTools/tomcat-6.0.28/conf/logging.properties -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/Users/rlarsen/JavaTools/tomcat-6.0.28/endorsed -classpath /Users/rlarsen/JavaTools/tomcat-6.0.28/bin/bootstrap.jar -Dcatalina.base=/Users/rlarsen/JavaTools/tomcat-6.0.28 -Dcatalina.home=/Users/rlarsen/JavaTools/tomcat-6.0.28 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/Users/rlarsen/JavaTools/tomcat-6.0.28/temp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start
  361 s000  R+     0:00.00 grep java

and when using the complete syntax I posted earlier, I'm getting

rlarsen:~ rlarsen$ ps -axe | grep tomcat | grep java | awk '{print $1}'
321
rlarsen:~ rlarsen$ 

[Rene Larsen]

OK - I'm using iTerm as the Terminal - and here -axe is working because the shell is diffrent from Apples Terminal Application - where the flags -ef is working.

If you use the command below you should get the pid.

ps -ef | grep 'Bootstrap start$' | awk '{print $2}'

[Dave Alvarado]

How are you starting Tomcat? I'm using bash shell script and this command

ps -ef | grep tomcat

doesn't produce anything, even though Tomcat is definitely running. - Dave

[Rene Larsen]

In your case you need to use Tomcat (with capital letter)

[Tim Holloway]

The CATALINA_PID in the catalina.sh is not an export. That's why you can't find it. It's the location of a FILE that the pid will be stored into. You can access it like so:

SERVER_PID=`cat $CATALINA_PID`
echo "The Process ID for Tomcat is $SERVER_PID"

One advantage of that approach is that other processes can get the PID easily.

[Rene Larsen]

Tim Holloway wrote:The CATALINA_PID in the catalina.sh is not an export. That's why you can't find it. It's the location of a FILE that the pid will be stored into. You can access it like so:

SERVER_PID=`cat $CATALINA_PID`
echo "The Process ID for Tomcat is $SERVER_PID"

One advantage of that approach is that other processes can get the PID easily.

Where is this PID file located - I can't find it when the server is running???

That's why I use the shell command my self.

[Tim Holloway]

The PID file is located wherever you tell the catalina script to put it. CATALINA_PID is an input variable, not an output. You supply the path/file and tomcat writes its PID number a single line of text to that file.