Tomcat doesn't stop. How can I debug this?

Question

I have a Tomcat 7 running in Linux that I start via $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh and shutdown via $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh

Answer 1

Find out what threads are still running (or blocked, waiting to run) by using jstack or sending a signal to the process:

kill -3 pid

When you know this, you can make whatever it was that started them hook into the shutdown notification to stop the threads. Or make those threads deamon threads.

See This tomcat shutdown question for more details on this.

If you don't know where your threads were created, then consider adding names to them - executors can take thread factories, and you can use those factories to set the deamon status of a thread and also to name it - so your stack trace will be clearer.