apacheds.service script not running from systemctl correctly

[Brian Swan]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is more of a general bug with Systemd/systemctl, but the apacheds.service file doesn't seem to read the EnvironmentFile variable, or at least doesn't act upon the variable therein.

While trying to start the apacheds service from systemctl I get the following errors:

----
bswan@ds:/lib/systemd/system$ sudo systemctl start apacheds
Failed to start apacheds.service: Unit apacheds.service is not loaded properly: Invalid argument.
See system logs and 'systemctl status apacheds.service' for details.
bswan@ds:/lib/systemd/system$ sudo systemctl status apacheds
● apacheds.service - Apache Directory Server
   Loaded: error (Reason: Invalid argument)
   Active: inactive (dead)

Nov 30 08:17:18 ds systemd[1]: apacheds.service: Service lacks both ExecStart= and ExecStop= setting. Refusing.
Nov 30 08:17:45 ds systemd[1]: [/lib/systemd/system/apacheds.service:11] Executable path is not absolute, ignoring: ${JAVA_HOME}/bin/
Nov 30 08:17:45 ds systemd[1]: apacheds.service: Service lacks both ExecStart= and ExecStop= setting. Refusing.
Nov 30 08:29:27 ds systemd[1]: apacheds.service: Service lacks both ExecStart= and ExecStop= setting. Refusing.
Nov 30 08:30:50 ds systemd[1]: [/lib/systemd/system/apacheds.service:11] Executable path is not absolute, ignoring: ${JAVA_HOME}/bin/
Nov 30 08:30:50 ds systemd[1]: apacheds.service: Service lacks both ExecStart= and ExecStop= setting. Refusing.
Nov 30 08:35:54 ds systemd[1]: apacheds.service: Service lacks both ExecStart= and ExecStop= setting. Refusing.
Nov 30 08:49:04 ds systemd[1]: apacheds.service: Service lacks both ExecStart= and ExecStop= setting. Refusing.
Nov 30 08:59:28 ds systemd[1]: [/lib/systemd/system/apacheds.service:12] Executable path is not absolute, ignoring: ${JAVA_HOME}/bin/
Nov 30 08:59:28 ds systemd[1]: apacheds.service: Service lacks both ExecStart= and ExecStop= setting. Refusing.
----

After much experimentation the work-around to get it working is to just copy the environment variables from /etc/default/apacheds and paste them into their appropriate places in the apacheds.service file and put the entire thing on one very long line.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Zhang Zhongyi (ohnozzy)]

Since the official fix is not out yet, I would like to give more detail on the workaround.
After investigation.
There two problems:

1. In the /lib/systemd/system/apacheds.service
ExecStart=${JAVA_HOME}/bin/java
The ExecStart does not accept environment variable as part of the path to the executable. So replace ${JAVA_HOME} with /usr/bin/java or /usr/lib/jvm/default-java

2. In the /etc/default/apacheds
ADS_INSTANCES="$ADS_HOME/instances"
Since variable expansion is not performed inside the strings for environment variables, replace $ADS_HOME with /usr/share/apacheds

[Demitrius Belai (demitriusbelai)]

My fix is little different. I just rewrited ExecStart with '/bin/sh -c':

ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "${JAVA_HOME}/bin/java ${JAVA_OPTS} \
            -Dapacheds.controls=${ADS_CONTROLS} \
            -Dapacheds.extendedOperations=${ADS_EXTENDED_OPERATIONS} \
            -Dlog4j.configuration=file:${ADS_INSTANCES}/${ADS_INSTANCE}/conf/log4j.properties \
            -Dapacheds.log.dir=${ADS_INSTANCES}/${ADS_INSTANCE}/log \
            -cp '${ADS_HOME}/lib/*' \
            org.apache.directory.server.UberjarMain \
            ${ADS_INSTANCES}/${ADS_INSTANCE}/"

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "Patch for apacheds.service" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

[Andreas Wahlfeldt (zaphod-b)]

2.0.0~M15-4 on Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-45-generic x86_64) still suffers from this bug.
None of the suggested Solutions here worked for me.

The apache-directory-server package should be fixed or removed from Ubuntu.