PingGateway

Starting and stopping PingGateway

Start PingGateway with default settings

When you start PingGateway, specify the configuration directory where PingGateway looks for configuration files.

  1. Start PingGateway:

    Linux

    /path/to/ping-gateway-2026.9.0/bin/start.sh

    Windows

    C:\path\to\ping-gateway-2026.9.0\bin\start.bat

    By default, PingGateway configuration files are located under $HOME/.openig on Linux, %appdata%\OpenIG on Windows. Learn how to use a different location in Configuration location.

  2. Check that PingGateway is running in one of the following ways:

    • Check the PingGateway endpoint at http://ig.example.com:8085/health/startup to make sure PingGateway it returns HTTP 200 OK.

      If PingGateway hasn’t finished starting up or is shutting down, the endpoint returns HTTP 503 Service Unavailable.

    • Display the product version and build information at http://ig.example.com:8085/api/info.

Start PingGateway with custom settings

By default, PingGateway runs on HTTP, on port 8080, from the instance directory $HOME/.openig.

To start PingGateway with custom settings, add the configuration file admin.json with the following properties, and restart PingGateway:

  • vertx: Finely tune Vert.x server-side properties.

  • connectors: Customize server port, TLS, and Vert.x-specific configurations. Each connectors object represents the configuration of an individual port.

This example starts PingGateway with non-default connector ports and configures server-side WebSocket options for port 9091:

{
  "connectors": [{
    "port": 9090
  },
  {
    "port": 9091,
    "vertx": {
      "maxWebSocketFrameSize": 131072,
      "maxWebSocketMessageSize": 262144
    }
  }]
}

For more information, refer to AdminHttpApplication (admin.json).

Allow startup when there is an existing PID file

By default, if there is an existing PID file during startup the startup fails. Use one of the following ways to allow startup when there is an existing PID file. PingGateway then removes the existing PID file and creates a new one during startup.

  1. Add the following configuration to admin.json and restart PingGateway:

    {
  "pidFileMode": "override"
}

    Source: admin-pidfilemode.json

  2. Define an environment variable for the configuration token ig.pid.file.mode, and then start PingGateway in the same terminal:

    • Linux

    • Windows

    $ IG_PID_FILE_MODE=override /path/to/ping-gateway-2026.9.0/bin/start.sh
    C:\IG_PID_FILE_MODE=override
C:\path\to\ping-gateway-2026.9.0\bin\start.bat %appdata%\OpenIG

  3. Define a system property for the configuration token ig.pid.file.mode when you start PingGateway:

    Linux

    $HOME/.openig/env.sh

    Windows

    %appdata%\OpenIG\env.sh

    export "IG_OPTS=-Dig.pid.file.mode=override"

Stop PingGateway

Use the stop.sh script to stop an instance of PingGateway, specifying the instance directory as an argument.

If the instance directory isn’t specified, PingGateway uses the default instance directory as in these examples:

Linux

/path/to/ping-gateway-2026.9.0/bin/stop.sh $HOME/.openig

Windows

C:\path\to\ping-gateway-2026.9.0\bin\stop.bat %appdata%\OpenIG

Forcible shutdown

By default, the stop.sh and stop.bat scripts let the PingGateway process terminate gracefully.

You can set a time limit in milliseconds after which the script forces PingGateway to shut down. Specify the time limit after the instance directory argument.

The following examples kill the PingGateway process after 20 seconds if it has failed to terminate gracefully:

Linux

/path/to/ping-gateway-2026.9.0/bin/stop.sh $HOME/.openig 20000

Windows

C:\path\to\ping-gateway-2026.9.0\bin\stop.bat %appdata%\OpenIG 20000

Make sure the time limit is longer than the grace period for connections to close (default: 1 second/1000 milliseconds). Learn about the "gracePeriod" settings in the admin.json reference documentation for administrative connections and client connections

Start and stop PingGateway on distroless Linux containers

Distroless Linux container images usually don’t include a shell (/bin/sh). Without a shell, you can’t use the start.sh script. To start PingGateway in a distroless container without a shell, invoke java directly as in the following example Dockerfile:

FROM debian:12-slim AS builder

WORKDIR /build

COPY *.zip ./
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends unzip && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* && \
    unzip *.zip && \
    mv ping-gateway-* /opt/gateway && \
    mkdir -p /var/gateway

FROM gcr.io/distroless/java21-debian12:nonroot

COPY --from=builder --chown=65532:65532 /opt/gateway /opt/gateway
COPY --from=builder --chown=65532:65532 /var/gateway /var/gateway

EXPOSE 8080 8085

ENTRYPOINT ["java", \
    "-classpath", "/opt/gateway/classes:/opt/gateway/lib/*", \
    "org.forgerock.openig.standalone.Start", \
    "/var/gateway"]

The /var/gateway folder in this example contains PingGateway configuration files. You mount it at runtime. Learn more about running PingGateway in a Docker container in Deploying PingGateway with Docker.

To stop PingGateway in a distroless container, send SIGTERM to PID 1. The container runtime does this automatically when you run docker stop or when the container orchestrator terminates the container. SIGTERM is delivered to PID 1 (the JVM process), which triggers PingGateway’s shutdown hooks for a graceful shutdown.

When the container gets the SIGTERM, stop.sh doesn’t run, meaning:

  • PingGateway doesn’t remove its PID file, which causes the container to fail to restart by default.

    You must prevent the container from failing to start again when it finds the old PID file. Either set the pidFileMode to override in admin.json or start the container with the --env IG_OPTS=-Dig.pid.file.mode=override option.

  • There’s no equivalent to the forcible-shutdown timeout option described in Forcible shutdown.