Starting jetty as debian service fails

Question

I have installed jetty 9 but I fail to start/stop it as a service. Running from command line works.

root@backend:/opt/jetty# service jetty start
Job for jetty.service failed. See 'systemctl status jetty.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.
root@oakstair-backend:/opt/jetty# systemctl status jetty.service
● jetty.service - LSB: Jetty start script.
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/jetty)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2016-12-16 10:14:47 UTC; 6min ago
  Process: 11826 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/jetty start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Dec 16 10:14:43 backend jetty[11826]: JETTY_PID      =  /var/run/jetty.pid
Dec 16 10:14:43 backend jetty[11826]: JETTY_START    =  /opt/jetty/start.jar
Dec 16 10:14:43 backend jetty[11826]: JETTY_ARGS     =  --add-to-start=console-capture jetty.state=/opt/jetty/jetty.state jetty-logging.xml jetty-started.xml
Dec 16 10:14:43 backend jetty[11826]: JAVA_OPTIONS   =  -Dorg.eclipse.jetty.LEVEL=DEBUG -Djetty.logging.dir=/opt/jetty/logs -Djetty.home=/opt/jetty -Djetty.base=/opt/jetty -Djava.io.tmpdir=/tmp
Dec 16 10:14:43 backend jetty[11826]: JAVA           =  /usr/bin/java
Dec 16 10:14:43 backend jetty[11826]: RUN_CMD        =  /usr/bin/java -Dorg.eclipse.jetty.LEVEL=DEBUG -Djetty.logging.dir=/opt/jetty/logs -Djetty.home=/opt/jetty -Djetty.base=/opt/jetty -Djava.io.tmpdir=/tmp -jar /opt/jetty/start.jar --add-to-st...ml jetty-started.xml
Dec 16 10:14:47 backend jetty[11826]: Starting Jetty: FAILED Fri Dec 16 10:14:47 UTC 2016
Dec 16 10:14:47 backend systemd[1]: jetty.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Dec 16 10:14:47 backend systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Jetty start script..
Dec 16 10:14:47 backend systemd[1]: Unit jetty.service entered failed state.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.
root@backend:/opt/jetty# 
root@backend:/opt/jetty# ls /var/log/jetty/
root@backend:/opt/jetty# 

Currently using jetty 9.3.14 since i first tried 9.4.0 with same result.

Can't say that jetty is very helpful in telling why it does not want to start as a service. Found some other guy with same problem that had to do with file/dir owner. But I have checked that.

Oops I found that it logs to /opt/jetty/logs instead of /var/logs/jetty as I wanted. So now I have some more info ...

StartLog Establishing /opt/jetty/logs/start.log on Fri Dec 16 13:40:16 UTC 2016
org.eclipse.jetty.start.graph.GraphException: Missing referenced dependency: console-capture
        at org.eclipse.jetty.start.graph.Graph.selectNodes(Graph.java:470)
        at org.eclipse.jetty.start.BaseBuilder.build(BaseBuilder.java:152)
        at org.eclipse.jetty.start.Main.start(Main.java:407)
        at org.eclipse.jetty.start.Main.main(Main.java:75)

Answer 1

-Djetty.home=/opt/jetty -Djetty.base=/opt/jetty

Do not use the same directory for jetty.home and jetty.base.

As the documentation, and the startup warnings (since Jetty 9.2.0) tell you.

General suggestions (you'll be happy when you do this, and it all starts to make sense):

Unpack a fresh distribution of jetty-home (or the older jetty-distribution tarball) into a empty ${jetty.home} directory.

Leave the ${jetty.home} directory alone, don't edit it, don't rename things, don't delete things, don't add things, don't change anything in it.

Setup a proper ${jetty.base} directory somewhere, make sure it does not overlap with your ${jetty.home} directory in any way.

Now configure your instance of jetty entirely within your ${jetty.base} directory.

Example:

# Initialize a fresh base directory (only need to do this once, ever)
$ mkdir /path/to/mybase
$ cd /path/to/mybase

# Prepare the jetty.base directory (this just creates directories, and adds start.d/*.ini for you)
$ java -jar /path/to/jetty-dist/start.jar --add-to-start=http,deploy,resources,ext,jmx,requestlog,console-capture,annotations,jsp
MKDIR : ${jetty.base}/start.d
INFO  : webapp          transitively enabled, ini template available with --add-to-start=webapp
INFO  : ext             initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/ext.ini
INFO  : server          transitively enabled, ini template available with --add-to-start=server
INFO  : requestlog      initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/requestlog.ini
INFO  : servlet         transitively enabled
INFO  : jsp             initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/jsp.ini
INFO  : resources       initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/resources.ini
INFO  : annotations     initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/annotations.ini
INFO  : plus            transitively enabled
INFO  : deploy          initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/deploy.ini
INFO  : security        transitively enabled
INFO  : jmx             initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/jmx.ini
INFO  : apache-jsp      transitively enabled
INFO  : console-capture initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/console-capture.ini
INFO  : jndi            transitively enabled
INFO  : http            initialized in ${jetty.base}/start.d/http.ini
MKDIR : ${jetty.base}/lib
MKDIR : ${jetty.base}/lib/ext
MKDIR : ${jetty.base}/logs
MKDIR : ${jetty.base}/resources
MKDIR : ${jetty.base}/webapps
INFO  : Base directory was modified

$ ls -F
lib/  logs/  resources/  start.d/  webapps/

# Configure your jetty.base instance
$ cp /tmp/mywebapp.war webapps/
$ edit start.d/http.ini

# Start your server instance (manually)
$ java -jar /path/to/jetty-dist/start.jar

Since you are starting via a service ...

The startup script, found in ${jetty.home}/bin/jetty.sh needs to go into your appropriate /etc/ directory (too many options to list them out here).

And you'll configure your JETTY_HOME and JETTY_BASE directories in your usual /etc/default/jetty file.

In the future, when a new version of Jetty is released ...

1. Unpack the new jetty-distribution into a new, empty, directory, such as /opt/jetty-dist-9.5.0
2. Edit your /etc/default/jetty and set the JETTY_HOME=/opt/jetty-dist-9.5.0
3. Start jetty

You don't have to edit your ${jetty.base} to do an upgrade.