Ansible - start tomcat on host

Question

I've been working on ansible playbook to download and start tomcat in a host.

This is my inventory host file:

[group1]
machine1 ansible_host=10.40.0.168

I have group1.yml file in my group_vars:

---
ansible_ssh_user: user
ansible_ssh_pass: pass
ansible_sudo_pass: passp

My playbook is:

---
- hosts: group1
  sudo: yes
  tasks:

 - name: Update all packages to the latest version
   apt:
     upgrade: dist

- name: Download tomcat
  get_url: url=http://mirrors.up.pt/pub/apache/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.1/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.1-fulldocs.tar.gz dest=/opt/apache-tomcat-9.0.1.tar.gz

- name: Unarchive a file that is already on the remote machine
  unarchive:
   src: /opt/apache-tomcat-9.0.1.tar.gz
   dest: /opt/
   remote_src: yes

- name: Run Tomcat
  shell: ./startup.sh
  args:
    chdir: /opt/apache-tomcat-9.0.1/bin

I try to run ./startup.sh in /opt/apache-tomcat-9.0.1/bin folder to start tomcat.

I run the following command:

ansible-playbook playbookname.yml

If I run ./startup.sh in a host machine it works fine, but when I run it from the control machine I get:

PLAY [group1] **********************************************************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *************************************************************************************************
ok: [myname]

TASK [Update all packages to the latest version] ***********************************************************************
ok: [myname]

TASK [Download tomcat] *************************************************************************************************
ok: [myname]

TASK [Unarchive a file that is already on the remote machine] **********************************************************
ok: [myname]

TASK [Run Tomcat] ******************************************************************************************************
changed: [myname]

PLAY RECAP *************************************************************************************************************
myname                       : ok=5    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0

After this I try to open tomcat, but it's not running on the host.

How can I start tomcat from ansible?

Solution

You should add it as a service, eg as below:

service file: /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service (It should be in target destination machine)

File should contain as below, (Adjust to your java environment)

[Unit]
Description=Apache Tomcat Web Application Container
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=forking

Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk/jre
Environment=CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomcat/apache-tomcat-8.0.47/temp/tomcat.pid
Environment=CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat/apache-tomcat-8.0.47
Environment=CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomcat/apache-tomcat-8.0.47
Environment='CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx1024M -server -XX:+UseParallelGC'
Environment='JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom'

ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/apache-tomcat-8.0.47/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/bin/kill -15 $MAINPID

User=tomcat
Group=tomcat

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then start the server with below systemd ansible module,

- name: enable tomcat startup
    systemd:
    name: tomcat
    enabled: yes
    state: restarted
    become: true