Ubuntu – Fix a tomcat6 error message “/bin/bash already running” when starting tomcat

bashtomcattomcat6Ubuntu

I have a Ubuntu 10.04 machine that has tomcat6 on it. When I start tomcat6 with /etc/init.d/tomcat6 start I get 

* Starting Tomcat servlet engine tomcat6
/bin/bash already running.

and the server fails to start. Unfortunately, there is nothing in /var/log/tomcat/catalina.out to help debug the issue. With some cleverly placed echo statements it seems to be the line from /etc/init.d/tomcat6:

start-stop-daemon --start -u "$TOMCAT6_USER" -g "$TOMCAT6_GROUP" \
                -c "$TOMCAT6_USER" -d "$CATALINA_TMPDIR" \
                -x /bin/bash -- -c "$AUTHBIND_COMMAND $TOMCAT_SH"

The only thing I've changed in this script is TOMCAT6_USER=root. In servers.xml, the only thing I've changed is <Connector port="80" protocol="HTTP/1.1" from port 8080. I have tried reinstalling the package by first removing everything sudo apt-get --purge remove tomacat6 and then sudo apt-get install tomcat6 but this has not solved the issue. I have also restarted the server multiple times in hopes of some magic. Everything was working until I restarted my server. Any ideas?

Best Answer

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Here's a patch that makes running tomcat as root work:

--- init.d.old/tomcat6  2010-09-01 15:31:01.996208252 -0700
+++ init.d/tomcat6  2010-09-01 15:30:10.315146226 -0700
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/bin/sh
+#!/bin/sh -x
 #
 # /etc/init.d/tomcat6 -- startup script for the Tomcat 6 servlet engine
 #
@@ -141,6 +141,12 @@
        cd \"$CATALINA_BASE\"; \
        \"$CATALINA_SH\" $@"

+   cat >/etc/init.d/tomcat_exec.sh <<-EOT
+   #!/bin/bash
+   $TOMCAT_SH
+   EOT
+   chmod +x /etc/init.d/tomcat_exec.sh 
+
    if [ "$AUTHBIND" = "yes" -a "$1" = "start" ]; then
        TOMCAT_SH="'$TOMCAT_SH'"
    fi
@@ -151,7 +157,7 @@
    chown $TOMCAT6_USER "$CATALINA_PID" "$CATALINA_BASE"/logs/catalina.out
    start-stop-daemon --start -u "$TOMCAT6_USER" -g "$TOMCAT6_GROUP" \
        -c "$TOMCAT6_USER" -d "$CATALINA_TMPDIR" \
-       -x /bin/bash -- -c "$AUTHBIND_COMMAND $TOMCAT_SH"
+       -x /etc/init.d/tomcat_exec.sh 
    status="$?"
    set +a -e
    return $status
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