Can't start an application as service, but running as standalone process simply works

Question

For a service although a pid file exists, but still when attempting to start service, it fails saying:

$ sudo service cassandra start
* could not access pidfile for Cassandra

I verified folder permissions under /var/run (whose owner is root) and the subfolder cassandra is owned by cassandra user, but still the service cannot access pid file even though I verified that pid file exists. (Also pid is allocated). So why does it say it can't access pidfile?

And running cassandra as a standalone process just works, but not just using service cassandra start

$ sudo ls -l /var/run/cassandra 
total 4 
-rw-r--r-- 1 cassandra cassandra 4 Mar 18 07:33 cassandra.pid
$ sudo su
# ls -ld /var/run/cassandra 
dr--r----- 2 cassandra cassandra 60 Mar 18 07:38 /var/run/cassandra

How do I make this work using sudo service cassandra start ?

it created a new pid file on start but same message on cheking status,, `* could not access pidfile for Cassandra` — Rajat Gupta, Mar 18 '14 at 07:22
let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/13674/discussion-between-danatela-and-user01) — Danatela, Mar 18 '14 at 07:25
another thing of importance, I observed that the user that is supposd to run cassandra/access cassandra(/var/run) folder(ie, user created by cassandra package itself to run cassandra), I can't switch myself to that cassandra user.. using `sudo -iu cassandra` — Rajat Gupta, Mar 18 '14 at 07:26
it doesnot acutally switch me to that user,, hence cassandra user does not get the permissions to access that `/var/run/cassandra` folder.. — Rajat Gupta, Mar 18 '14 at 07:27

Danatela · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-18T08:00:37.380

5

You have to remove /var/run/cassandra folder hence it has wrong permissions:

sudo rm -rf /var/run/cassandra

Or you can fix permissions manually:

sudo chmod 750 /var/run/cassandra

Then start Cassandra as service:

sudo service cassandra start

Some explanations

Instructions of file permissions you can find here.

It is safe to delete that folder because it recreates with right permissions and content. But do not delete it once it works correct. It may result in loss of data or incorrect behavior.
chmod 750 decrypts as rwxr-x--- permissions. It allows read-write-execute to the user, read-execute to the group and nothing to others. For Cassandra, it is enough to set permissions so.

edited Mar 18 '14 at 08:00

answered Mar 18 '14 at 07:43

Danatela

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is it safe to remove this folder ? does it get created as it was before ? – Rajat Gupta Mar 18 '14 at 07:48
1

I updated the answer. – Danatela Mar 18 '14 at 08:02
Thanks, if after deleting `/var/run/cassandra` if it works/ runs, does that mean it has not lost any data ? – Rajat Gupta Mar 18 '14 at 08:17
1

Probably does. Sorry, I don't know the purpose of Cassandra. May be you will find info about this in it's manual. – Danatela Mar 18 '14 at 08:21

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 13 '15 at 15:30

This solution can be achieved the following way:

$ sudo vim /etc/init.d/cassandra;

Find the following line:

CMD_PATT="cassandra.+CassandraDaemon"

Replace by:

CMD_PATT="cassandra"

Save and stop and start again. Service will get status correctly; Tested on cassandra 2.3

Source here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-cassandra-and-run-a-single-node-cluster-on-ubuntu-14-04 (check STEP 3)

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 10 '15 at 15:55

My solution for migration of Cassandra 2.0.9 to 2.1.4

After upgrade with

sudo apt-get install dsc21

Go to log file:

tail -f /var/log/cassandra/system.log

You can see you need to modify your cassandra configuration file.

Stop Cassandra
```
sudo /etc/init.d/cassandra stop
```
Go to Cassandra configuration file
```
sudo vi /etc/cassandra/cassandra.yaml
```
Comment out these 5 lines or remove them:
- multithreaded_compaction: false
- preheat_kernel_page_cache: false
- memtable_flush_queue_size: 4
- in_memory_compaction_limit_in_mb: 64
- compaction_preheat_key_cache: true
Start Cassandra
```
sudo /etc/init.d/cassandra start
```
Verify
```
nodetool status
```

Can't start an application as service, but running as standalone process simply works

3 Answers3

Some explanations

Linked