The problem is located in the initscript (/etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat6) with the invocation of the $SU command, which is either /sbin/runuser or /bin/su. Please note there are multiple places in the initscript where $SU is invoked, here is one typical example.
$SU – $TOMCAT_USER -c “${TOMCAT_SCRIPT} start” >> $TOMCAT_LOG 2>&1
The key element here to notice is that a command line is being passed via the -c argument, this requires the user ($TOMCAT_USER) to have a shell in which to execute the -c command. But system daemons shouldn’t have login shells for security reasons. If $TOMCAT_USER doesn’t have a login shell then $SU aborts with the message:
“This account is currently not available.”
The solution is to provide a temporary shell to $SU for the purpose of executing the -c command. This can be done with the -s arg to $SU. One possible solution would be to modify the definition of $SU in the script, thus:
# For SELinux we need to use 'runuser' not 'su'
if [ -x "/sbin/runuser" ]; then
SU="/sbin/runuser"
else
SU="/bin/su"
fi
would become:
if [ -x "/sbin/runuser" ]; then
SU="/sbin/runuser -s /bin/sh"
else
SU="/bin/su -s /bin/sh"
fi