如何在CloudFormation cfn-init中启动长期运行的JAR？

Question

I am trying to start a Spring boot server with a JAR file. Generally this is executed with java -jar springboot.jar &

However I am having trouble doing this using CloudFormation and this does not appear to work.

I am trying to do it in cfn-init this way:

"AWS::CloudFormation::Init" : {
    "config" : {
        "commands": {
            "start_server": {
                "command": "bash startup_script.sh &",
                "cwd": "/home/ec2-user"
             }
        }

But the init does not go through.

Answer 1

I think using userdata property of ec2 would suffice in this case. However if you need more help in generating the cumbersome AWS::CloudFormation::Init object, you can use cloudkast which is an online cloudformation template generator.

Answer 2

A very simple way is to add a CreationPolicy and set the time-out as needed

CreationPolicy:
    ResourceSignal:
      Count: '3'
      Timeout: PT15M

Adjust as you need. I've used this in cfn-init blocks that needed to do tasks that could take half an hour.