Spring Boot as a Linux service

2017-10-02 in Java / Operations tagged Daemon / Linux / Service / Spring Framework / Spring Boot / Systemctl / systemd by Marc Nuri | Last updated: 2025-09-12

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Introduction

In this post, I'll show you how to configure a Spring Boot application to run as a service on Linux.

First, I'll show you how to configure the service with scripts compatible with System V init systems. Then, I'll explain how to configure the service on newer systems that use systemd.

Executable Jar

One of the advantages of Spring Boot is that it allows us to create self-contained executable Jars, which lets us treat the packaged application in a Jar directly as an executable that provides parameters like "start", "stop", "restart", "status" that are useful when managing services.

To create an executable Jar, we need to do one of the following two configurations depending on whether we use Maven or Gradle:

Maven

Add the following to the project's pom.xml:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <executable>true</executable>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Gradle

Add the following to the project's build.gradle:

springBoot {
    executable = true
}

Starting the application from the Jar, in addition to supporting the previously mentioned options, implies the following:

The script starts the application with the user who owns the script
The script tracks the application's PID using /var/run/<applicationname>/<applicationname>.pid
The script writes logs to /var/log/<applicationname>.log

Installation as init.d service (System V)

For this case, we'll leverage the previously mentioned properties of executable Jars that can be created in Spring Boot.

In this case, the task will be as simple as adding a symbolic link to the Jar in the init.d directory:

sudo ln -s /var/<applicationpath>/<applicationname>.jar /etc/init.d/<applicationname>

Once this is done, you can start/stop/restart the application exactly as with any other service:

service <applicationname> start

Similarly, we can mark the application (service) to start automatically when the system boots:

update-rc.d <applicationname> defaults

Securing the service

As I've indicated, the init.d service will start the application with the user who owns the application. In this regard, it's important that this user has the necessary permissions for the application to behave correctly.

The user used to start the application should be one without login capability. We can use the following command to modify the shell and prevent login for the user:

chsh -s /usr/sbin/nologin <user>

We can change the application's owner user as follows:

chown <user>:<group> <applicationname>.jar

The application jar should only have read and execute permissions for its owner, so we change its attributes:

chmod 500 <applicationname>.jar

In the end, we should have a structure like the following:

Spring application properties as service

Installation as systemd service

Nowadays, most Linux distributions use systemd to manage system processes. Unlike SystemV where startup parameters are by convention, in the case of systemd it's by configuration, so to enable a service it's necessary to create a configuration script.

Configuration script

Scripts are located in the /etc/systemd/service directory, so for our application we'll need to create a file called /etc/systemd/service/<applicationname>.service like the following:

[Unit]
Description=<applicationname>
After=syslog.target

[Service]
User=<executoruser>
ExecStart=/path/to/application/<applicationname>.jar
SuccessExitStatus=143

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To mark the service to start automatically when the system boots, we'll use the following command:

sudo systemctl enable applicationname.service

Conclusion

In this post I've shown you how to configure a Spring Boot application to run as a service on Linux. I've shown two methods, one for older systems that use System V and another for newer systems that use systemd.

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