Question

What’s the best way to restart a java app in ubuntu? I know u can run commands like this one from the terminal, but it doesnt seem to be working…

        String restartArgs = "java -jar \'/home/fdqadmin/NetBeansProjects/dbConvert2/dist/dbConvert2.jar\' --Terminal=true";
        Process restart = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(restartArgs);
        System.exit(1);

Answer 1

You are killing the parent process with System.exit(1), so its child process is destroyed as well.
To restart you would typically provide a shell script wrapper to launch the actual Java app.

#!/bin/sh
restartCode="1"; # predefined restart signal code
java -jar '/home/fdqadmin/NetBeansProjects/dbConvert2/dist/dbConvert2.jar' --Terminal=true; # run java program
if [ $? -eq restartCode ] # if exit code is equal to predefined restart signal code
then
  $0; # restart script
fi
exit $?;

Note the above code is a rough, crude outline. Typical wrappers are far more complex to deal with commandline arguments passed to the startup script itself etc. etc. Plus, my sh-skills are not infallible.