Apache jsvc fails to stop daemon

Question

I am using a native compiled jsvc to launch a java daemon. I am running this on an openSUSE 32 bit vm. The code implements Apache's daemon interface, and I'm executing the deamon with the following command. ``` ./jsvc -home jre -errfile logs/jsvc.err -pidfile daemon.pid -cp com.loader.loaderservice.LoaderDaemon ``` It starts and runs without a problem. I can start the daemon as a normal user and as root. However, when I go to terminate the daemon, jsvc kills the process rather than issuing a stop command. ``` ./jsvc -stop -home jre -outfile logs/jsvc.err -errfile logs/jsvc.err -pidfile daemon.pid -cp com.loader.loaderservice.LoaderDaemon ``` The daemon process dies, but does not execute any of its shutdown steps (for example, it should log, mark a record in the db, etc). I get the following in the logs/jsvc.err file, and it doesn't write any other logs: ``` Service exit with return value 143 ``` After googling the error, I'm seeing a handful of people who…

Accepted Answer

Ah, ok. It turns out that the jsvc stop command was behaving correctly. I had to dig into the way that processes receive termination messages in Linux/Unix via the kill command. Jsvc issues a kill -15 (which is a soft kill) on the daemon. See: http://commons.apache.org/daemon/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_(command) for the description of how unix processes receive messages.

The real issue was in the construction of the daemon. In my start method, the daemon looped until a shutdown command was issued, which prevented the daemon from giving up control as the daemon child process.

I had this:

```
@Override
public void start() 
{
    doStartWork();
    while (isAlive()) 
    {
        Thread.sleep(1000); 
    }
}
```

I should have had below, so I could return and allow the daemon thread to receive signals from the OS. See http://commons.apache.org/daemon/jsvc.html#How_jsvc_works, sepcifically the section under: 'Controlled process:'

```
@Override
public void start() 
{
    doStartWork();
}
```

Apache jsvc fails to stop daemon

Solution

Problem