Run a Java Application as a Service on Linux

I wrote another simple wrapper here:

#!/bin/sh
SERVICE_NAME=MyService
PATH_TO_JAR=/usr/local/MyProject/MyJar.jar
PID_PATH_NAME=/tmp/MyService-pid
case $1 in
    start)
        echo "Starting $SERVICE_NAME ..."
        if [ ! -f $PID_PATH_NAME ]; then
            nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR /tmp 2>> /dev/null >> /dev/null &
            echo $! > $PID_PATH_NAME
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME started ..."
        else
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME is already running ..."
        fi
    ;;
    stop)
        if [ -f $PID_PATH_NAME ]; then
            PID=$(cat $PID_PATH_NAME);
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stoping ..."
            kill $PID;
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stopped ..."
            rm $PID_PATH_NAME
        else
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME is not running ..."
        fi
    ;;
    restart)
        if [ -f $PID_PATH_NAME ]; then
            PID=$(cat $PID_PATH_NAME);
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stopping ...";
            kill $PID;
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME stopped ...";
            rm $PID_PATH_NAME
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME starting ..."
            nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR /tmp 2>> /dev/null >> /dev/null &
            echo $! > $PID_PATH_NAME
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME started ..."
        else
            echo "$SERVICE_NAME is not running ..."
        fi
    ;;
esac 

You can follow a full tutorial for init.d here and for systemd (ubuntu 16+) here

If you need the output log replace the 2

nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR /tmp 2>> /dev/null >> /dev/null &

lines for

nohup java -jar $PATH_TO_JAR >> myService.out 2>&1&

A simple solution is to create a script start.sh that runs Java through nohup and then stores the PID to a file:

nohup java -jar myapplication.jar > log.txt 2> errors.txt < /dev/null &
PID=$!
echo $PID > pid.txt

Then your stop script stop.sh would read the PID from the file and kill the application:

PID=$(cat pid.txt)
kill $PID

Of course I've left out some details, like checking whether the process exists and removing pid.txt if you're done.

Linux service init script are stored into /etc/init.d. You can copy and customize /etc/init.d/skeleton file, and then call

service [yourservice] start|stop|restart

see http://www.ralfebert.de/blog/java/debian_daemon/. Its for Debian (so, Ubuntu as well) but fit more distribution.