How to automatically start Kafka upon system startup in Ubuntu?

One easy approach is to use systemd. You should note that at the startup the environment variables like JAVA_HOME are not loaded yet, so we should introduce them to the system. One good solution is to create a file named profile and add all the necessary variable to that:

# /home/kafka/profile
JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk8
KAFKA_HOME=/opt/kafka

Supposing you've installed Kafka on the path /opt/kafka, in order to Kafka run automatically after Ubuntu startup (tested on Ubuntu 16.04 and centOS7 and I guess it works on any distribution with the support of the systemd) do the following command:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/kafka.service  # open file to add service informations

Now add the following contents to the file

[Unit]
Description=Kafka Daemon
Wants=syslog.target

# suppose you have a service named zookeeper that it start zookeeper and we want Kafka service run after the zookeeper service
After=zookeeper.service

[Service]    
Type=forking

# the user whom you want run the Kafka start and stop command under
User=kafka    

# the file path that contains envirnment variables
EnvironmentFile=/home/kafka/profile

# the directory that the commands will run there   
WorkingDirectory=/home/kafka/ 

# Kafka server start command
ExecStart=/opt/kafka/bin/kafka-server-start.sh -daemon /opt/kafka/config/server.properties

# Kafka server stop command
ExecStop=/opt/kafka/bin/kafka-server-stop.sh -daemon

TimeoutSec=30
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note: As Kafka need the zookeeper to connect it at the starting time, I supposed we have a zookeeper service too and I set the Kafka service to run after zookeeper service starting.

Now after saving the kafka.service file, just run the following command to create a link of the Kafka service and it will start every time you reboot the OS:

sudo systemctl enable kafka

Now you can start the Kafka service using the command:

sudo systemctl start kafka.service

and check the status of the service:

sudo systemctl status kafka.service

Here's how I configure Kafka to start automatically on Ubuntu 14.04:

sudo su
cp -R ~/kafka_2.11-0.10.0.1 /opt
ln -s /opt/kafka_2.11-0.10.0.1 /opt/kafka

Copy the following init script to /etc/init.d/kafka:

DAEMON_PATH=/opt/kafka/
PATH=$PATH:$DAEMON_PATH/bin

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
  start)
        # Start daemon.
        echo "Starting Zookeeper";
        nohup $DAEMON_PATH/bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh -daemon /$DAEMON_PATH/config/zookeeper.properties 2> /dev/null && \
        echo "Starting Kafka";
        nohup $DAEMON_PATH/bin/kafka-server-start.sh -daemon /$DAEMON_PATH/config/server.properties 2> /dev/null
        ;;
  stop)
        # Stop daemons.
        echo "Shutting down Zookeeper";
        pid=`ps ax | grep -i 'org.apache.zookeeper.server' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
        if [ -n "$pid" ]
          then
          kill -9 $pid
        else
          echo "Zookeeper was not Running"
        fi
        echo "Shutting down Kafka";
        pid=`ps ax | grep -i 'kafka.Kafka' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
        if [ -n "$pid" ]
          then
          kill -9 $pid
        else
          echo "Kafka was not Running"
        fi
        ;;
  restart)
        $0 stop
        sleep 2
        $0 start
        ;;
  status)
        pid=`ps ax | grep -i 'org.apache.zookeeper.server' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
        if [ -n "$pid" ]
          then
          echo "Zookeeper is Running as PID: $pid"
        else
          echo "Zookeeper is not Running"
        fi
        pid=`ps ax | grep -i 'kafka.Kafka' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
        if [ -n "$pid" ]
          then
          echo "Kafka is Running as PID: $pid"
        else
          echo "Kafka is not Running"
        fi
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
        exit 1
esac

exit 0

Make the kafka service with these commands:

chmod 755 /etc/init.d/kafka
update-rc.d kafka defaults

Now you should be able to start and stop the kafka service like this:

sudo service kafka start
sudo service kafka status
sudo service kafka stop

If you want to remove the Kafka service later, run update-rc.d -f kafka remove.

Download Kafka

cd /opt
sudo wget http://mirror.hosting90.cz/apache/kafka/2.5.0/kafka-2.5.0-src.tgz
sudo tar -zxvf kafka-2.5.0-src.tgz
sudo mv kafka-2.5.0-src kafka
sudo rm kafka-2.5.0-src.tgz
cd kafka
sudo ./gradlew jar -PscalaVersion=2.11.12

Install Zookeeper

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/zookeeper.service

Edit zookeeper.service

[Unit]
Requires=network.target remote-fs.target
After=network.target remote-fs.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=root
ExecStart=/opt/kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh opt/kafka/config/zookeeper.properties
ExecStop=/opt/kafka/bin/zookeeper-server-stop.sh
Restart=on-abnormal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start Zookeeper

sudo systemctl enable zookeeper.service

sudo systemctl start zookeeper.service

sudo systemctl status zookeeper.service

active (running)

Install Kafka

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/kafka.service

Edit kafka.service

[Unit]
Requires=zookeeper.service
After=zookeeper.service

[Service]
Type=simple
User=root
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c '/opt/kafka/bin/kafka-server-start.sh /opt/kafka/config/server.properties > /opt/kafka/kafka.log 2>&1'
ExecStop=/opt/kafka/bin/kafka-server-stop.sh
Restart=on-abnormal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start Kafka

sudo systemctl enable kafka.service

sudo systemctl start kafka.service

sudo systemctl status kafka.service

active (running)

Test Kafka works

create topic

sudo bin/kafka-topics.sh --describe --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic test-topic

put messages to topic

sudo bin/kafka-console-producer.sh --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic test-topic  
> test message1
> test messate2
^C

read messages from topic

sudo bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --from-beginning --topic test-topic
test message1
test messate2
^C