Q:

SDL Web8 Content Service standalone microservice won't start

I have recently installed the SDL Web8 Content Service as a standalone micro service. I set the LOGGING level to trace. When I try  to start the service, it shuts down after about 10 seconds. There are a ot of log entries, but the final 6 lines are:
2016-01-22 07:58:45,265 INFO  ODataWebserviceExtensionManager - Finished loading webservice extensions
2016-01-22 07:58:45,307 TRACE ODataWebHandler - Initializing extensions.
2016-01-22 07:59:28,423 DEBUG TridionEntityTypeRegister - Registering entity data models
2016-01-22 07:59:28,895 DEBUG TridionEntityTypeRegister - Registering metadata functions
2016-01-22 07:59:30,318 DEBUG AmbientServiceProvider - Initializing Ambient Data Framework Service
2016-01-22 07:59:41,706 DEBUG ODataContextListener - OData servlet Context was destroyed, shutting down StorageManagerFactory

I also tried running the service using the start.ps1 PowerShell script, but I see the same problem.
Can anyone suggest what may be causing this, or which other log files I should look in to try and solve the problem? 

A:

If you don't see any other errors, I'm guessing it is a port conflict. The default port for the Content Service is 8081; perhaps something else on your machine is already running on that port.
You can check that using PowerShell:
Get-NetTCPConnection | where { $_.LocalPort -eq 8081}

If that returns anything, there is something running on that port.
(You can also use netstat -ao if you prefer)
Edit: Another possibility is that you haven't added a valid cd_licenses.xml file to the config folder of the server. Although that does normally show up in the logs and when you run 'Start.ps1', it can be easy to miss.

