How do I run a spring boot executable jar in a Production environment?

Question

Spring boot's preferred deployment method is via a executable jar file which contains tomcat inside.

It is started with a simple java -jar myapp.jar.

Now, I want to deploy that jar to my linux server on EC2, am I missing something or do I really need to create a init script to properly start the application as a daemon?

If I simply call java -jar the application dies when I log out.

I could start it in screen or nohup but that is not very elegant and a restart in my server would force me to log in and start the process manually.

So, is there something already for the task in spring boot?

Answer 1

Please note that since Spring Boot 1.3.0.M1, you are able to build fully executable jars using Maven and Gradle.

For Maven, just include the following in your pom.xml:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <executable>true</executable>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

For Gradle add the following snippet to your build.gradle:

springBoot {
    executable = true
}

The fully executable jar contains an extra script at the front of the file, which allows you to just symlink your Spring Boot jar to init.d or use a systemd script.

init.d example:

$ln -s /var/yourapp/yourapp.jar /etc/init.d/yourapp

This allows you to start, stop and restart your application like:

$/etc/init.d/yourapp start|stop|restart

Or use a systemd script:

[Unit]
Description=yourapp
After=syslog.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/var/yourapp/yourapp.jar
User=yourapp
WorkingDirectory=/var/yourapp
SuccessExitStatus=143

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

More information at the following links:

• Installation as an init.d service
• Installation as a systemd service