Run a Java Application as a Service on Linux

I have written a Java server application that runs on a standard virtual hosted Linux solution. The application runs all the time listening for socket connections and creating new handlers for them. It is a server side implementation to a client-server application.

The way I start it is by including it in the start up rc.local script of the server. However once started I do not know how to access it to stop it and if I want to install an update, so I have to restart the server in order to restart the application.

On a windows PC, for this type of application I might create a windows service and then I can stop and start it as I want. Is there anything like that on a Linux box so that if I start this application I can stop it and restart it without doing a complete restart of the server.

My application is called WebServer.exe. It is started on server startup by including it in my rc.local as such:

java -jar /var/www/vhosts/myweb.com/phpserv/WebServer.jar &

I am a bit of a noob at Linux so any example would be appreciated with any posts. However I do have SSH, and full FTP access to the box to install any updates as well as access to a Plesk panel.

I wrote another simple wrapper here:

#!/bin/sh
SERVICE_NAME=MyService
PATH_TO_JAR=/usr/local/MyProject/MyJar.jar
PID_PATH_NAME=/tmp/MyService-pid
case $1 in
    start)
        echo "Starting $SERVICE_NAME ..."
        if [ ! -f $PID_PATH_NAME ]; then
            nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR /tmp 2>> /dev/null >> /dev/null &
            echo $! > $PID_PATH_NAME
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME started ..."
        else
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME is already running ..."
        fi
    ;;
    stop)
        if [ -f $PID_PATH_NAME ]; then
            PID=$(cat $PID_PATH_NAME);
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stoping ..."
            kill $PID;
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stopped ..."
            rm $PID_PATH_NAME
        else
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME is not running ..."
        fi
    ;;
    restart)
        if [ -f $PID_PATH_NAME ]; then
            PID=$(cat $PID_PATH_NAME);
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stopping ...";
            kill $PID;
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stopped ...";
            rm $PID_PATH_NAME
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME starting ..."
            nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR /tmp 2>> /dev/null >> /dev/null &
            echo $! > $PID_PATH_NAME
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME started ..."
        else
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME is not running ..."
        fi
    ;;
esac 

You can follow a full tutorial for init.d here and for systemd (ubuntu 16+) here

If you need the output log replace the 2

nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR /tmp 2>> /dev/null >> /dev/null &

lines for

nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR >> myService.out 2>&1&

A simple solution is to create a script start.sh that runs Java through nohup and then stores the PID to a file:

nohup java -jar myapplication.jar > log.txt 2> errors.txt < /dev/null &
PID=$!
echo $PID > pid.txt

Then your stop script stop.sh would read the PID from the file and kill the application:

PID=$(cat pid.txt)
kill $PID

Of course I've left out some details, like checking whether the process exists and removing pid.txt if you're done.

Linux service init script are stored into /etc/init.d. You can copy and customize /etc/init.d/skeleton file, and then call

service [yourservice] start|stop|restart

see http://www.ralfebert.de/blog/java/debian_daemon/. Its for Debian (so, Ubuntu as well) but fit more distribution.

Maybe not the best dev-ops solution, but good for the general use of a server for a lan party or similar.

Use screen to run your server in and then detach before logging out, this will keep the process running, you can then re-attach at any point.

Workflow:

Start a screen: screen

Start your server: java -jar minecraft-server.jar

Detach by pressing: Ctl-a, d

Re-attach: screen -r

More info here: https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html

Another alternative, which is also quite popular is the Java Service Wrapper. This is also quite popular around the OSS community.