Spring Boot application as a Service
How to configure nicely Spring Boot application packaged as executable jar as a Service in the Linux system? Is this recommended approach, or should I convert this app to war and install it into Tomcat?
Currently, I can run Spring boot application from the screen session, which is nice but requires manual start after a server reboot.
What I'm looking for is general advice/direction or sample init.d the script, if my approach with executable jar is proper.
Answer
The following works for springboot 1.3 and above:
As init.d service
The executable jar has the usual start, stop, restart, and status commands. It will also set up a PID file in the usual /var/run directory and logging in the usual /var/log directory by default.
You just need to symlink your jar into /etc/init.d like so
sudo link -s /var/myapp/myapp.jar /etc/init.d/myapp
OR
sudo ln -s ~/myproject/build/libs/myapp-1.0.jar /etc/init.d/myapp_servicename
After that you can do the usual
/etc/init.d/myapp start
Then setup a link in whichever runlevel you want the app to start/stop in on boot if so desired.
As a systemd service
To run a Spring Boot application installed in var/myapp you can add the following script in /etc/systemd/system/myapp.service:
[Unit]
Description=myapp
After=syslog.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/var/myapp/myapp.jar
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
NB: in case you are using this method, do not forget to make the jar file itself executable (with chmod +x) otherwise it will fail with error "Permission denied".
Reference