Brilliant! I knew about setting system properties, but I didn't know ${var} would pull from the unix environment!
What we're doing now is tomee-exec->deb package->sftp to ubuntu->freight script adds to apt repo->apt installation on linux system. The deb script creates a user/group after the artifact id, then installs a systemd unit to control the process. We then just point systemd at an environment file with all of the secret stuff: [Unit] Description=${project.artifactId} ${project.version} After=network.target [Service] EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/${project.artifactId} Type=simple WorkingDirectory=/opt/${project.artifactId} ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -jar /opt/${project.artifactId}/${project.artifactId}-exec.jar User=${project.artifactId} Group=${project.artifactId} RestartSec=10 Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target -- Sent from: http://tomee-openejb.979440.n4.nabble.com/TomEE-Users-f979441.html