Attempting to start Glassfish (1.0.0) in daemon mode via the gem with Capistrano (2.5.10) results in the Glassfish process
existing immediately iff the “default_run_options[:pty]” Capistrano variable is set to “true”.

If it is false (the default), then the Glassfish daemon process survives and all is well.

So the workaround is to make the default setting:

default_run_options[:pty] = false

Reference: http://timothynjones.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/fix-for-glassfish-spontaneously-exiting-under-capistrano/