Tomcat service will only start on user login

[Matthew Snow]

I've setup tomcat on a CentOS 6.5 and chown'ed the directory as tomcat:tomcat (a valid user on the server). I've placed my startup script in /etc/init.d/tomcat (chmod 755) and I've registered it with chkconfig at level 234, though a --list shows level 5 is also on. We've also disabled SELinux, but tomcat still will only come up when the user account root is logged into. The only thing I can think of is that I did all of this as the root user, not as the tomcat user using sudo. Would that be the cause of my problem, or am I missing something else.

[Roger Sterling]

Can you post your startup files ? Are you having init.d invoke CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh ? Do you enable the tomcat user in rc.ini/rc.conf (in /etc)? Exactly what is the chkconfig command you are running ? What script does it point to ? Need more info ... specific code posted that comprise the contents of your scripts. TellTheDetails .

[Matthew Snow]

Thanks for the reply. Below is my /etc/init.d/tomcat script. This script is invoking CATALINA_HOME/bin/catalina.sh. I did not enable the tomcat user in rc.conf, file does not exist on CentOS 6.5, or at least I can't find it. The chkconfig commands I used were "chkconfig --add /etc/init.d/tomcat" and "chkconfig --level 234 /etc/init.d/tomcat on".

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.7.0_51
export CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

DAEMON=$CATALINA_HOME/bin/catalina.sh
NAME=tomcat
DESC="tomcat6"

test -f $DAEMON || exit 0

set -e

if [ ! $CATALINA_HOME ] ; then
	echo "Please define CATALINA_HOME in /etc/profile.d/tomcat.sh"
	exit 1
fi

COMMAND=$1
OPTION=0
if [ $1 = "-f" ] ; then
	OPTION=$1
	COMMAND=$2
fi

case $COMMAND in 
	start)
		echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
		chown -R tomcat:tomcat $CATALINA_HOME/*
		$DAEMON start 
		echo "$NAME."
	;;
	stop)
		echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
		if [ $OPTION = "-f" ] ; then
			$DAEMON stop -force
		else
			$DAEMON stop
		fi
		echo "$NAME."
	;;
	restart)
		echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
		if [ $OPTION = "-f" ] ; then
			$DAEMON stop -force
		else
			$DAEMON stop
		fi
		sleep 1
		echo 
		echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
		$DAEMON start
		echo "$NAME."
	;;
	*)
		N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
		echo "Usage: $N [-f] {start|stop|restart}" >&2
		exit 1
	;;
esac

exit 0

[Tim Holloway]

My best guess is that you haven't paid attention to the startup order of the system services. If you attempt to start Tomcat before the network services, for example, it will fail. Or at least be useless, since the running Tomcat wouldn't have been able to open its listener ports.

If you're using the chkconfig command to enable Tomcat service, you should add something like this to the top of it:

#!/bin/sh
# 
# Init script for the Tomcat server
# 
# chkconfig: 345 90 10
# description: Tomcat
# 
# 
# This is the Tomcat server
# 

The "chkconfig" line indicates what init levels Tomcat runs under (3, 4, and 5) and that its startup and shutdown priorities are. You want those numbers to be after the network, but before Apache coming up and the reverse going down.

Level 3 is the lowest level that has network services, level 5 is with the GUI enabled, and actually at the moment, I don't think people use level 4, but no harm in allowing for it.

To get these settings to take:

/sbin/chkconfig tomcat off # disable old level priorities
/sbin/chkconfig tomcat on # endable new level priorities

And you might have to manually remove the old level priority aliases from the rc3.d, rc4.d and rc5.d directories.

You might want to confirm that CentOS 6.5 still uses init scripts. I'm pretty sure all CentOS 6 versions do, but since the Red Hat world is migrating to the newer systemctl manager, there could be a problem there.