Ubuntu Upstart job with java jar

Posted on Saturday, February 1, 2014


This article covers setting up an Upstart Job on an Ubuntu 12.04 server. This upstart job will start/stop a program packaged in a jar file.

For lots of details on upstart you can go to http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/ [1]


Creating a jar file with a manifest


To make life easier I am going to install ant to use to compile the code and create the jar file.


> sudo apt-get install ant


Create the code


> cd
> mkdir jar-test
> cd jar-test
> mkdir -p src/com/whiteboardcoder/hello
> mkdir target
> vi src/com/whiteboardcoder/hello/hw.java


Put this in the java file

package com.whiteboardcoder.hello;

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.TimeZone;
import java.util.Locale;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

public class hw {

   public static String getISO8601Now(){
      DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(
                     "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'", Locale.US);
      dateFormat.setTimeZone(
                      TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
      return dateFormat.format(new Date());
   }

   public static void main(String...args){
      TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC");
      try{
        while(true){
          System.out.println(
               "Hello World The UTC time in ISO 8601 format is "             
               + hw.getISO8601Now());
          Thread.sleep(2000);
        }
      }
      catch(Exception e){
      }
   }
}

Create build.xml file for the ant build


> vi build.xml


And place the following in it


<project default="main" basedir=".">

   <target name="main">
     <echo>Compiling code and creating Jar file</echo>
     <javac srcdir="src"
            destdir="target"
       />
     <jar basedir="target" destfile="HW.jar">
        <manifest>
            <attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.whiteboardcoder.hello.hw" />
        </manifest>
     </jar>
   </target>
</project>


Run the ant build and create the executable jar file


> ant






Now run the executable jar


> java -jar HW.jar


This will output the UTC time in ISO 8601 format every 2 seconds



I just wanted to create a simple program that would keep putting output out so that we could see that it started/stopped in the upstart job





Create the upstart job


I found a few sites giving suggestions on how to make an upstart job to run a java jar file.  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12102270/run-java-jar-file-on-a-server-as-background-process [2] has an upstart job that I used (adjusted it a little) http://askubuntu.com/questions/162768/starting-java-processes-with-upstart [3] has a more complex upstart example.


Another site I used for some information on upstart stanzas is at http://upstart.ubuntu.com/wiki/Stanzas [4]


Now to the nitty gritty create the /etc/init/helloworld.conf


> sudo vi /etc/init/helloworld.conf




This is the contents of my upstart job


description "Hello World"
author "Patman"

start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]


#Respawn the process if it crashes
#If it respawns more than 10 times in 5 seconds stop
respawn
respawn limit 10 5

expect fork

script
    cd /home/patman/jar-test
    java -jar HW.jar > /var/log/HW-test.log 2>&1
end script


Save it and start it


> sudo start helloworld







Then look at the output being saved at /var/log/HW-test.log


> sudo start helloworld


Now tail the output file


> sudo tail -f /var/log/HW-test.log







To stop the program run the following


> sudo stop helloworld




If you tail the log you will see that it has stopped J



References
[1]        Upstart Intro, Cookbook and Best Practises
            http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/
                Accessed 01/2014
[2]        Run java jar file on a server as background process
                Accessed 01/2014
[3]        Starting java processes with Upstart
                Accessed 01/2014
[4]        Upstart Stanza
                Accessed 01/2014


4 comments:

  1. Thanks! It was really helpful and straight forward.

    ReplyDelete
  2. See this blog was posted a while ago - but it still helped me today! Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you found it useful. I try to put the date on all my posts and all my videos so people can see if it's still worth reading. a 10 year old article on curl or sed is probably still good but most other things change too quickly to get much out of them after a few years :)

      Delete
    2. yah… while our server runs Ubuntu 14.04 I need to translate systemd-config to upstart-config for all services…

      Delete