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javatomcatwindows-servicestomcat7tomcat6

Tomcat fails to load webapp when it is running as a windows service

I am using tomcat 7 and I have a webapp which has 1 configuration file & 1 hazelcast.xml file in tomcat bin directory. When I start tomcat as a process from startup.bat catalina.timestamp.log shows INFO: Configuring Hazelcast from 'C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0_ApacheTomcat7\bin\hazelcast.xml'. and everything works fine, but when I start the same webapp by starting tomcat as a windows service it goes to tomcat home dir and looks for the file here INFO: Configuring Hazelcast from 'C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0_ApacheTomcat7\hazelcast.xml'.

Is there any jvm or tomcat option that I need to place?

below is my Java Options which is set in Tomcat properties

-Dcatalina.home=C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0_ApacheTomcat7
-Dcatalina.base=C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0_ApacheTomcat7
-Djava.endorsed.dirs=C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0_ApacheTomcat7\endorsed
-Djava.io.tmpdir=C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0_ApacheTomcat7\temp
-Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager
-Djava.util.logging.config.file=C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0_ApacheTomcat7\conf\logging.properties

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Solution

  • I was able to solve my problem.

    When I start Tomcat as a Windows service it sets the current working dir to %CATALINA_HOME%. So I added --StartPath=%CATALINA_HOME%\bin in service.bat (details here) and installed a fresh service like so: service.bat install MyService.

    screenshot showing where entry for StartPath has to be made

    Incase one does not have service.bat but tomcat6: below is the command to create a fresh windows service.

    tomcat6 //IS//MyService --DisplayName="My Service Name" \ --Install="C:\tomcat6\bin\tomcat6.exe" --Jvm=auto \ --StartMode=jvm --StopMode=jvm \ --StartClass=org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap --StartParams=start \ --StopClass=org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap --StopParams=stop \ --StartPath=C:\tomcat6\bin

    You can even set this in the Tomcat GUI: Startup tab | Start parameters.
    (The Tomcat GUI is also known as the "Commons Daemon Service Manager". Default name is tomcat7w.exe, or "YOURSERVICENAMEHEREw.exe".)