[chef] Tomcat service restarts Tomcat on each chef-client run

[Mark Nichols < >]

Ohai Chefs,

I have a cookbook that installs Tomcat7, sets up an `/etc/init.d` service to 
start, stop, or restart Tomcat, and provides a LWRP to deploy applications to 
the instance from our Artifactory setup.

It all works with one caveat: Tomcat gets restarted every time the 
chef-client daemon runs, or every 15 minutes in this case.

Here is the `default` recipe, which installs Tomcat and sets up the service:

# Create a tomcat user
user node['tomcat']['tomcat_user'] do
  comment 'tomcat user'
  system true
  shell "/bin/false"
end

# Create home for Tomcat
directory "#{node['tomcat']['tomcat_home']}" do
        owner node['tomcat']['tomcat_user']
        group node['tomcat']['tomcat_user']
        mode "0755"
        recursive true
        action :create
end

# use ark to extract the archive
ark "#{node['tomcat']['tomcat_version']}" do
        path node['tomcat']['tomcat_home']
        url node['tomcat']['tomcat_url']
        version node['tomcat']['tomcat_version']
        owner node['tomcat']['tomcat_user']
        checksum node['tomcat']['checksum']
        action [ :put ]
end

# Create /etc/init.d entry for Tomcat
template "#{node['tomcat']['service']}" do
  source "tomcat7.erb"
  mode "0755"
  owner "root"
  group "root"
end

# Tomcat Service
# Control whether Tomcat restarts automatically or not
if node['tomcat']['autostart']
  service 'tomcat' do
#    service_name "tomcat#{node['tomcat']['base_version']}"
    service_name "tomcat7"
    supports :restart => false, :reload => false, :start => true, :stop => 
true
    action [ :start, :enable ]
    notifies :run, 'execute[wait for tomcat]', :immediately
    retries 4
    retry_delay 30
  end
end

execute 'wait for tomcat' do
  command 'sleep 5'
  action :nothing
end


I recently added the conditional `if node[‘tomcat’][‘autostart’]` around the 
`service`. Even with that attribute set to `false` the service restarts with 
every daemon run.

For completeness sake, here is the template I’m using for the `/etc/init.d` 
script.

#!/bin/bash
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:        tomcat7
# Required-Start:  $network
# Required-Stop:   $network
# Default-Start:   2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:    0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start/Stop Tomcat server
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

if [ -f <%= node["tomcat"]["tomcat_conf"] %>/catalina.sh.includes ]; then
  source <%= node["tomcat"]["tomcat_conf"] %>/catalina.sh.includes
fi

start() {
  sh <%= node["tomcat"]["tomcat_bin"] %>/startup.sh
}

stop() {
  sh <%= node["tomcat"]["tomcat_bin"] %>/catalina.sh stop -force
}

showconfig() {
  echo ${JAVA_OPTS}
}

case $1 in
  start|stop|showconfig) $1;;
  restart) stop; sleep 2; start;;
  *) echo "Run as $0 <start|stop|restart>"; exit 1;;
esac


Any ideas as to what I’m doing that is causing Tomcat to be restarted with 
each daemon run?

Thanks in advance,
Mark