Is Tomcat running?

Question

Interested to know how people usually check to see if Tomcat is running on a Unix environment.

I either check that the process is running using

ps -ef | grep java
ps -ef | grep logging

or i check that the port number is active

netstat -a | grep 8080

is there a better way of checking that Tomcat is running? The above seem to be to be a 'hacky' way of checking that Tomcat is running.

could someone help to take a look at this question? https://stackoverflow.com/q/64904316/13754159 — jiangwensi, Nov 19 '20 at 02:09

Thai Tran · Answer 1 · 2012-08-09T04:23:43.697

103

On my linux system, I start Tomcat with the startup.sh script. To know whether it is running or not, i use

ps -ef | grep tomcat

If the output result contains the whole path to my tomcat folder, then it is running

edited Aug 09 '12 at 04:23

answered Aug 09 '12 at 03:49

Thai Tran

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score 72 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 06 '14 at 20:58

72

try this instead and because it needs root privileges use sudo

sudo service tomcat7 status

edited Feb 06 '14 at 20:58

eeadev

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answered Jan 30 '14 at 08:08

Kemboi

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What if Tomcat is not a service? Instead a package. – emeraldhieu Aug 06 '15 at 02:47
1

@Emerald214 in that case you'll get a `tomcat7: unrecognized service` – Yar Jul 01 '17 at 08:08
@Yar, it depends on your tomcat version – Tmh Oct 24 '19 at 03:32

score 61 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 31 '15 at 18:02

61

Why grep ps, when the pid has been written to the $CATALINA_PID file?

I have a cron'd checker script which sends out an email when tomcat is down:

kill -0 `cat $CATALINA_PID` > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -gt 0 ]
then
    echo "Check tomcat" | mailx -s "Tomcat not running" support@dom.com
fi

I guess you could also use wget to check the health of your tomcat. If you have a diagnostics page with user load etc, you could fetch it periodically and parse it to determine if anything is going wrong.

edited Dec 31 '15 at 18:02

erip

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answered Oct 16 '10 at 23:59

dogbane

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is this as easy to do with windows? would i just modify the commands for windows equivalents, throw it in a batch file, and then schedule through scheduler? – liltitus27 Apr 28 '14 at 19:01
You could do something along the lines of `tasklist |find /I "Tomcat" || echo "Tomcat not running"` in a bat file, but you may need to find java, not Tomcat depending on what the process name is. – GL2014 Apr 28 '14 at 23:46
3

To learn what the value of $CATALINA_PID is from your OS-installed Tomcat, try: `ps aewwx | grep CATALINA_PID` and you will find it in the output for the running process, amongst the other environment variables. In Debian 8 this value is: CATALINA_PID=/var/run/tomcat8.pid – Professor Falken Jul 04 '16 at 00:26
3

It's important to note that a pid file may not exist, it depends on the environment and how tomcat was started. See [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/22021196/120794) to create a pid file on startup. – Alberto de Paola Sep 25 '16 at 01:59

score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 25 '17 at 06:52

15

netstat -lnp | grep 8080 would probably be the best way, if you know Tomcat's listening port. If you want to be certain that is is functional, you will have to establish a connection and send an HTTP request and get a response. You can do this programatically, or using any web browser.

edited Sep 25 '17 at 06:52

fluffyBatman

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answered Oct 15 '10 at 16:33

Michael Goldshteyn

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IF you know the port, I think this is the simplest way given that there are variations in how you check if the executable is running depending on how you installed Tomcat, whether its a service or not etc. – Jaffer Oct 18 '18 at 10:51

Dhanish Jose · Answer 5 · 2014-01-03T07:27:46.790

13

You can check the status of tomcat with the following ways:

ps -ef | grep tomcat

This will return the tomcat path if the tomcat is running

netstat -a | grep 8080

where 8080 is the tomcat port

edited Jan 03 '14 at 07:27

answered Dec 27 '13 at 07:24

Dhanish Jose

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score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 10 '13 at 00:10

7

If tomcat is installed locally, type the following url in a browser window: { localhost:8080 }

This will display Tomcat home page with the following message.

If you're seeing this, you've successfully installed Tomcat. Congratulations!

If tomcat is installed on a separate server, you can type replace localhost by a valid hostname or Iess where tomcat is installed.

The above applies for a standard installation wherein tomcat uses the default port 8080

answered Mar 10 '13 at 00:10

Lokanath

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If Tomcat is installed on a separate server, failing to access it from a browser won't tell you for sure whether it's running or not: it may be unreachable. – Marco Lackovic Mar 15 '13 at 17:40
I have installed Tomcat8 on Ubuntu, but going to http://localhost:8080/ results in the "Unable to connect" message. – ibodi Aug 09 '18 at 12:18
1

If you have a headless server on Linux this is not an option. – Klaus Nji Oct 10 '18 at 21:48

score 7 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 28 '18 at 05:43

7

Create a Shell script that checks if tomcat is up or down and set a cron for sh to make it check every few minutes, and auto start tomcat if down. Sample Snippet of code below

TOMCAT_PID=$(ps -ef | awk '/[t]omcat/{print $2}')
echo TOMCAT PROCESSID $TOMCAT_PID

if [ -z "$TOMCAT_PID" ]
then
    echo "TOMCAT NOT RUNNING"
    sudo /opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
else
   echo "TOMCAT RUNNING"
fi

answered Mar 28 '18 at 05:43

Devendra Dora

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I created a shell script that always return "TOMCAT RUNNING" even I stopped tomcat. But when I run the command on console, it worked fine. – Charles PHAM Mar 11 '19 at 03:18
Make sure that shell script name doesn't as tomcat keyword .If script has tomcat name , then in process list shell script name would show up , the code would think as if tomcat running . You can give any name to script without tomcat keyword in it – Devendra Dora May 05 '19 at 08:15

score 6 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 02 '14 at 08:59

6

I always do

tail -f logs/catalina.out

When I see there

INFO: Server startup in 77037 ms

then I know the server is up.

answered Jul 02 '14 at 08:59

konkit

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How can this be scripted? – Tinashe Chinyanga Feb 28 '22 at 09:53

score 6 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 28 '16 at 07:12

6

wget url or curl url where url is a url of the tomcat server that should be available, for example: wget http://localhost:8080. Then check the exit code, if it's 0 - tomcat is up.

answered Jan 28 '16 at 07:12

Dikla

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score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 15 '10 at 16:33

4

I've found Tomcat to be rather finicky in that a running process or an open port doesn't necessarily mean it's actually handling requests. I usually try to grab a known page and compare its contents with a precomputed expected value.

answered Oct 15 '10 at 16:33

Alex Howansky

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Himanshu Chauhan · Answer 11 · 2017-06-16T12:17:03.240

2

Since my tomcat instances are named as tomcat_ . For example. tomcat_8086, I use

#

ps aux | grep tomcat

Other method is using nc utility

`nc -l 8086` (port number )

Or

`ps aux | grep java`

edited Jun 16 '17 at 12:17

answered Sep 23 '16 at 12:06

Himanshu Chauhan

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Will Glass · Answer 12 · 2012-08-18T21:25:59.840

Are you trying to set up an alert system? For a simple "heartbeat", do a HTTP request to the Tomcat port.

For more elaborate monitoring, you can set up JMX and/or SNMP to view JVM stats. We run Nagios with the SNMP plugin (bridges to JMX) to check Tomcat memory usage and request thread pool size every 10-15 minutes.

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/monitoring.html

Update (2012):

We have upgraded our systems to use "monit" to check the tomcat process. I really like it. With very little configuration it automatically verifies the service is running, and automatically restarts if it is not. (sending an email alert). It can integrate with the /etc/init.d scripts or check by process name.

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Sep 08 '17 at 09:28

2

Try this command

ps -ef | awk '/[t]omcat/{print $2}'

It will return the pid if tomcat is running.

answered Sep 08 '17 at 09:28

Alin

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score 1 · Answer 14 · edited May 22 '19 at 23:01

1

tomcat.sh helps you know this easily.

tomcat.sh usage doc says:

no argument: display the process-id of the tomcat, if it's running, otherwise do nothing

So, run command on your command prompt and check for pid:

$ tomcat.sh

edited May 22 '19 at 23:01

Wade

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answered Dec 10 '18 at 07:27

Techflash

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score 0 · Answer 15 · edited Apr 22 '16 at 06:22

0

$ sudo netstat -lpn |grep :8080

To check the port number

$ ps -aef|grep tomcat

Is any tomcat is running under the server.

tsssinfotech-K53U infotech # ps -aef|grep tomcat

root 9586 9567 0 11:35 pts/6 00:00:00 grep --colour=auto tomcat

edited Apr 22 '16 at 06:22

Dovydas Šopa

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answered Apr 22 '16 at 06:03

Batchu Bhargava

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score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Oct 25 '17 at 18:11

Basically you want to test

Connectivity to your tomcat instance
Gather some basic statistics
Whether the unix process is running

I will evaluate first 2 options as the 3rd one has been sufficiently answered already.

easiest is just to develop a webpage on your WebApp that gathers some basic metrics, and have a client that can read the results or detect connectivity issues.

For doing so, you have several issues

Raja Anbazhagan · Answer 17 · 2017-12-10T04:54:29.410

Here are my two cents.

I have multiple tomcat instances running on different ports for my cluster setup. I use the following command to check each processes running on different ports.

/sbin/fuser 8080/tcp

Replace the port number as per your need.

And to kill the process use -k in the above command.

This is much faster than the ps -ef way or any other commands where you call a command and call another grep on top of it.
Works well with multiple installations of tomcat ,Or any other server that uses a port as a matter of fact running on the same server.

The equivalent command on BSD operating systems is fstat

Is Tomcat running?

17 Answers17

If you're seeing this, you've successfully installed Tomcat. Congratulations!

`nc -l 8086` (port number )

`ps aux | grep java`

Linked

Related

Is Tomcat running?

17 Answers17

If you're seeing this, you've successfully installed Tomcat. Congratulations!

nc -l 8086 (port number )

ps aux | grep java

Linked

Related

`nc -l 8086` (port number )

`ps aux | grep java`