Tomcat 8 doen´t start on ubuntu 15.04 -- status=127

I had the same error when I upgraded Ubuntu and also Java (8->11). The problem was a wrong JAVA_HOME path inside the systemd module. The JAVA_HOME path had "jre/" at the end which is wrong for newer Java versions. Solution:

1. Edit /etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service and remove the trailing "jre/" of the JAVA_HOME path.
2. systemctl daemon-reload
3. systemctl restart tomcat

Value 127 is returned by /bin/sh when the given command is not found within your PATH system variable and it is not a built-in shell command. In other words, the system doesn't understand your command, because it doesn't know where to find the binary you're trying to call.

for more info LINK

Something must got corrupted in the installation of Tomcat. I could not do apt-get remove tomcat8 nor apt-get purge tomcat8. I deleted the conf folder and saved my server.xml file and webapps folders. Then I was able to do a purge of tomcat followed by a fresh install and replacement of server.xml file with mine and I was running again.

Still do not know what corrupted the tomcat installation, but I was finally able to move on.

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Hi All i got something its working for me,so please try my procedure

First goto service file in init.d

/etc/init.d/tomcat8

turn out into a execution file by adding below code at tomcat8

#!/bin/sh

Some times Java Home is not properly set at environment so Export the java home and set process id (PID) for tomcat in Catalina.sh file

Go to /Tomcat/bin/catalina.sh 

Add the following codes at the starting of catalina.sh file

For exporting java home, Use the respected java version to set path i actually installed java at /usr/java/

JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.7.0_60 
PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
export PATH JAVA_HOME

It the last step now add the tomcat pid for catalina add the following code after setting java home

CATALINA_PID=/var/run/tomcat.pid

Now go to terminal start the tomcat service

service tomcat8 start

We need to reload system deamon

systemctl daemon-reload

its worked out for me feel free to ask questions

this happens in ubuntu 15.04

/etc/default files which enable/disable jobs enable=1|0 type settings in /etc/default files should generally be avoided. The canonical way to enable/disable a service in an init system agnostic way is update-rc.d enable|disable, which will translate to init system specific actions such as adding/removing symlinks (SysV and systemd) or creating/removing job override files (upstart). For systemd in particular, admins also often call systemctl enable|disable directly. Thus these settings are redundant in /etc/default

source:wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers

The issue is with /etc/init.d/tomcat8, java folder detection

find_jdks()
{
  for java_version in 9 8 7
  do
      for jvmdir in /usr/lib/jvm/java-${java_version}-openjdk-* \
                    /usr/lib/jvm/jdk-${java_version}-oracle-* \
                    /usr/lib/jvm/jre-${java_version}-oracle-*
      do
          if [ -d "${jvmdir}" ]
          then
              JDK_DIRS="${JDK_DIRS} ${jvmdir}"
          fi
      done
  done

  # Add older non multi arch installations
  JDK_DIRS="${JDK_DIRS} /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle"
}

So if it can't find java under /usr/lib/jvm/jre-${java_version}-oracle-* folder it was defaulting to java-7-oracle which was for java 7 if you have installed using apt-get; you will need to fix that to default to java-8-oracle.

So, I had to change JDK_DIRS="${JDK_DIRS} /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle" to JDK_DIRS="${JDK_DIRS} /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle" to get this working

I got this error because I was setting JAVA_HOME in /usr/share/tomcat8/bin/setenv.sh. The services script for tomcat /etc/init.d/tomcat8 instead wants you set up the tomcat environment in /etc/default/tomcat8. Once I put my settings into /etc/default/tomcat8 then deleted /usr/share/tomcat8/bin/setenv.sh tomcat started up just fine.

The reason appears to be that /etc/init.d/tomcat8 tries to figure out which JVM is used but ignores /usr/share/tomcat8/bin/setenv.sh. It uses the JVM info to look at the process list and see if tomcat is running. If you use setenv.sh, tomcat gets started with a different JVM than the one that init.d expects. It then can't see it in the process list and reports that it failed to start.

In my case JAVA_HOME path was incorrect

change it by editing

/etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service 

and remove the trailing "jre/"` of the JAVA_HOME path.

/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64/jre

it will look something like this after editing

/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64/

now do

1. systemctl daemon-reload
2. systemctl restart tomcat

i also got this error while starting tomcat service.in tomcat.service file when i checked [Service] section then i find that jre was not created so i remove the jre word.First it was like this "Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64/jre" i removed jre and it became like this "Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.11.0-openjdk-amd64" after that i started service.it worked.