Below is the output of the startup. As you can see, it does read the properties file correctly, as the pool setting of 150 does show up in here :
list of JARs that were scanned but no TLDs were found in them. Skipping unneeded JARs during scanning can improve startup time and JSP compilation time.
03:13:28,407 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.app.conf.AsyncConfiguration - Creating Async Task Executor
03:13:28,677 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.app.conf.DatabaseConfiguration - Configuring Datasource
03:13:28,833 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.app.conf.DatabaseConfiguration - Configuring Datasource with following properties (omitted password for security)
03:13:28,835 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.app.conf.DatabaseConfiguration - datasource driver : org.postgresql.Driver
03:13:28,835 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.app.conf.DatabaseConfiguration - datasource url : jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/flowable
03:13:28,836 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.app.conf.DatabaseConfiguration - datasource user name : flowable
03:13:28,836 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.app.conf.DatabaseConfiguration - Min pool size | Max pool size | acquire increment : 10 | 150 | 5
03:13:28,924 [MLog-Init-Reporter] INFO com.mchange.v2.log.MLog - MLog clients using slf4j logging.
03:13:28,937 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO com.mchange.v2.c3p0.C3P0Registry - Initializing c3p0-0.9.5.2 [built 08-December-2015 22:06:04 -0800; debug? true; trace: 10]
03:13:28,938 [localhost-startStop-1] WARN com.mchange.v2.c3p0.management.ActiveManagementCoordinator - A C3P0Registry mbean is already registered. This probably means that an application using c3p0 was undeployed, but not all PooledDataSources were closed prior to undeployment. This may lead to resource leaks over time. Please take care to close all PooledDataSources.
03:13:30,755 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.engine.impl.cfg.ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl - Found 3 Process Engine Configurators in total:
03:13:30,755 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.engine.impl.cfg.ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl - class org.flowable.dmn.spring.configurator.SpringDmnEngineConfigurator (priority:200000)
03:13:30,755 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.engine.impl.cfg.ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl - class org.flowable.form.spring.configurator.SpringFormEngineConfigurator (priority:300000)
03:13:30,755 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.engine.impl.cfg.ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl - class org.flowable.content.spring.configurator.SpringContentEngineConfigurator (priority:400000)
03:13:30,755 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.engine.impl.cfg.ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl - Executing beforeInit() of class org.flowable.dmn.spring.configurator.SpringDmnEngineConfigurator (priority:200000)
03:13:30,794 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.engine.impl.cfg.ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl - Executing beforeInit() of class org.flowable.form.spring.configurator.SpringFormEngineConfigurator (priority:300000)
03:13:30,800 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO org.flowable.engine.impl.cfg.ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl - Executing beforeInit() of class org.flowable.content.spring.configurator.SpringContentEngineConfigurator (priority:400000)
03:13:30,837 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO com.mchange.v2.c3p0.impl.AbstractPoolBackedDataSource - Initializing c3p0 pool… com.mchange.v2.c3p0.ComboPooledDataSource [ acquireIncrement -> 5, acquireRetryAttempts -> 30, acquireRetryDelay -> 1000, autoCommitOnClose -> false, automaticTestTable -> null, breakAfterAcquireFailure -> false, checkoutTimeout -> 0, connectionCustomizerClassName -> null, connectionTesterClassName -> com.mchange.v2.c3p0.impl.DefaultConnectionTester, contextClassLoaderSource -> caller, dataSourceName -> 1hgf8ua9p15bhv8hgzshm1|1fea7083, debugUnreturnedConnectionStackTraces -> false, description -> null, driverClass -> org.postgresql.Driver, extensions -> {}, factoryClassLocation -> null, forceIgnoreUnresolvedTransactions -> false, forceSynchronousCheckins -> false, forceUseNamedDriverClass -> false, identityToken -> 1hgf8ua9p15bhv8hgzshm1|1fea7083, idleConnectionTestPeriod -> 0, initialPoolSize -> 3, jdbcUrl -> jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/flowable, maxAdministrativeTaskTime -> 0, maxConnectionAge -> 0, maxIdleTime -> 1800, maxIdleTimeExcessConnections -> 1800, maxPoolSize -> 150, maxStatements -> 0, maxStatementsPerConnection -> 0, minPoolSize -> 10, numHelperThreads -> 3, preferredTestQuery -> null, privilegeSpawnedThreads -> false, properties -> {user=******, password=******}, propertyCycle -> 0, statementCacheNumDeferredCloseThreads -> 0, testConnectionOnCheckin -> true, testConnectionOnCheckout -> true, unreturnedConnectionTimeout -> 0, userOverrides -> {}, usesTraditionalReflectiveProxies -> false ]
03:13:30,847 [localhost-startStop-1] WARN com.mchange.v2.resourcepool.BasicResourcePool - Bad pool size config, start 3 < min 10. Using 10 as start.
After this message, it will sit for a few minutes (this is when it is requesting the DB connections in a loop), and ultimately it will fail with the message I have posted earlier in this thread …