Keep reverse SSH tunnel opened via java application when the app is stopped

Question

As discussed in the following StackOverflow question I am creating a Java program that starts a reverse SSH tunnel. I have created a script /root/reverse.sh that starts a subshell and creates a detached ssh reverse session:

#!/bin/bash
( /usr/bin/sshpass -p mypassword ssh -f -N -M -S /tmp/socketuser000.000.000.000 -p 0000 user@000.000.000.000 -R 21022:localhost:22 -R 21080:localhost:80 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no )

Then this script is executed from java as:

Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("/bin/bash /root/reverse.sh");
int result = process.waitFor();

The connection works just fine, the problem comes when I stop the java program, which is registered as a system service:

systemctl stop myapp

When the java process is killed the reverse ssh connection is killed too. I have checked via pstree that the reverse ssh process parent is PID 1 and not Java.

$ pstree -sg 2185
systemd(1)───ssh(2185)

I don't understand why when I kill the Java process the ssh process is killed too as it's not a child of the Java process. Why does this happen? Has this something to do with process groups? How can I prevent the ssh process from being killed?

Answer 1

Your process is getting SIG_HUP or SIG_INT when parent (java) process is exiting.

You may try running it with nohup so it will ignore SIG_HUP signal. Also you may include:

trap 'echo "Got sigint"' INT

in your .sh file, so instead of exiting normal way it would handle SIG_INT by echoing text. Feel free to use any other function to handle signals.

Also there is very good answer about signals here: What causes various signals to be sent?

Please consider changing your approach to this problem as this looks like a bad design pattern when you expect service to do something and keep doing it when service is stopped.