service tomcat7 start fails, but the process exists and tomcat is running

Question

I have been trying to install tomcat7 on ubuntu docker images with apt-get install tomcat7. The installation works fine and starting tomcat from the catalina.sh wo

Answer 1

In the docker Ubuntu image I am using (5506de2b643b - 14.04.1 LTS), the start-stop-daemon with the --test argument is working incorrectly and reports that tomcat is not running, even when it is.

The tomcat7 init.d script starts tomcat because start-stop-daemon --test says (correctly) tomcat is not running, but then a little later in the startup process it checks that tomcat started successfully and is running. start-stop-daemon --test now incorrectly says tomcat is not running, which causes the tomcat7 init.d script to remove the PID file.

As a result, service tomcat7 status returns false when tomcat is running because the PID file is gone, but it will return false even if the PID file is there with correct PID due to the bug in start-stop-daemon --test.

Here's an example session demonstrating the bug:

#TOMCAT PID IS 43
root@a2cf26ade2a9:/# ps -eaf | grep tomcat7
tomcat7     43     1  0 14:06 ?        00:00:04 /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle/bin/java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/var/lib/tomcat7/conf/logging.properties -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx128m -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/share/tomcat7/endorsed -classpath /usr/share/tomcat7/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/share/tomcat7/bin/tomcat-juli.jar -Dcatalina.base=/var/lib/tomcat7 -Dcatalina.home=/usr/share/tomcat7 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/tmp/tomcat7-tomcat7-tmp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start

#PID FILE HAS CORRECT PID
root@a2cf26ade2a9:/#  cat /var/run/tomcat7.pid
43

#START-STOP-DAEMON --TEST REPORTS THAT IT WOULD START TOMCAT
root@a2cf26ade2a9:/#  start-stop-daemon --test --start --pidfile /var/run/tomcat7.pid --user tomcat7 --exec /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle/bin/java
Would start /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle/bin/java .

root@a2cf26ade2a9:/# echo $?
0