Can't get "remote-exec" to startup tomcat

Question

When provisioning an instance, I am using "remote-exec" to execute some commands and then start up a tomcat instance through terraform. It looks something like this:

resource "null_resource" "mount_fss_on_DFSrvr" {
depends_on = ["oci_core_instance.DFSrvr",
  "oci_file_storage_export.export_FileListener_FileListenerMount",
]

count = "${var.proddfsrvr_count}"

provisioner "remote-exec" {
  connection {
    agent       = false
    timeout     = "15m"
    host        = "${oci_core_instance.DFSrvr.*.public_ip[count.index % var.proddfsrvr_count]}"
    user        = "opc"
    private_key = "${file(var.ssh_private_key)}"
  }

  inline = [
   "some commands",
    "./catalina.sh start",
    "exit"
  ]
}

}

The output shows that tomcat was started, but when I look on the instance, the logs show that it hasn't been started(there is no logging). I can ssh into the instance and run "./catalina.sh start" and it works fine. I have also tried creating a service and running "sudo service tomee start" instead of "./catalina.sh start" in the remote-exec inline command, and that doesn't work either. What am I doing wrong here?

  null_resource.mount_fss_on_DFSrvr[1] (remote-exec): Using CATALINA_BASE:   /apache-tomee-plus-7.0.4
null_resource.mount_fss_on_DFSrvr[1] (remote-exec): Using CATALINA_HOME:   /apache-tomee-plus-7.0.4
null_resource.mount_fss_on_DFSrvr[1] (remote-exec): Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /apache-tomee-plus-7.0.4/temp
null_resource.mount_fss_on_DFSrvr[1] (remote-exec): Using JRE_HOME:        /usr
null_resource.mount_fss_on_DFSrvr[1] (remote-exec): Using CLASSPATH:       /apache-tomee-plus-7.0.4/bin/bootstrap.jar:/apache-tomee-plus-7.0.4/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
null_resource.mount_fss_on_DFSrvr[1] (remote-exec): Tomcat started.

is "catalina.sh" has executable bit? maybe you can try "sh catalina.sh start". seems that you shoul add parameters to "remote-exec" [link] (terraform.io/docs/provisioners/remote-exec.html) — Aleksei Kurepin
@Aleksei Kurepin Yes, it is executable. I can ssh into the instance after and run it just fine. And the output that I posted shows that it ran successfully and Tomcat started. "sh catalina.sh start" does not work either. Thank you for your response. — Justin

Kishore T Kishore T · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-16T19:47:41

I had the same problem but while running a python web app. I guess the issue here is when you run the commands through remote-exec, it exits out of the shell once completed. So when you ssh into the machine it opens through a new shell, you should prefix nohup to your command and I believe that should do the trick. That did it for me though. Use & if you want it to run on background and come out of remote-exec. Also, you might want to add a "sleep 20" to the inline commands, this would give tomcat time to startup before the provisioner exits.

inline = [ "some commands", "nohup ./catalina.sh start &", "sleep 20", ]

Can't get "remote-exec" to startup tomcat

2 Answers