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Linux Service

Depending on your flavor of Linux, there are likely a few different ways you can run TomEE as a service. This page demonstrates running as a service with systemd, and has been tested with RedHat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu.

Create a dedicated user and group (here tomee) that owns the TomEE installation, then create a file /etc/systemd/system/tomee.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Apache TomEE
After=network.target

[Service]
User=tomee
Group=tomee
WorkingDirectory=/opt/tomee
Type=forking
Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-25-openjdk-amd64
Environment=CATALINA_PID=/opt/tomee/temp/tomee.pid
Environment=CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomee
Environment=CATALINA_BASE=/opt/tomee
Environment=CATALINA_OPTS=-server
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Xms2g -Xmx3g"
ExecStart=/opt/tomee/bin/startup.sh
ExecStop=/opt/tomee/bin/shutdown.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The file above assumes TomEE is extracted to /opt/tomee and that JAVA_HOME is at /usr/lib/jvm/java-25-openjdk-amd64 - adjust these, and the heap settings in JAVA_OPTS, to match your installation.

A value containing spaces has to be quoted as a whole ("JAVA_OPTS=…​"), and comments are not allowed inside a value.

Once done, run sudo systemctl daemon-reload so systemd is aware of the new service, and sudo systemctl enable tomee to start it at boot.

You should now be able to use the following commands to control the TomEE service:

  • sudo systemctl start tomee (to start TomEE)

  • sudo systemctl stop tomee (to stop TomEE)

  • sudo systemctl status tomee (to check the status of the TomEE service)