How does one start a node.js server as a daemon process?

Question

In Python Twisted, you have the twistd command that helps you with a number of things related to running your application (daemonize it for example).

Ho

Answer 1

UPDATE: i updated to include the latest from pm2:

for many use cases, using a systemd service is the simplest and most appropriate way to manage a node process. for those that are running numerous node processes or independently-running node microservices in a single environment, pm2 is a more full featured tool.

https://github.com/unitech/pm2

http://pm2.io

• it has a really useful monitoring feature -> pretty 'gui' for command line monitoring of multiple processes with pm2 monit or process list with pm2 list
• organized Log management -> pm2 logs
• other stuff:

  • Behavior configuration
  • Source map support
  • PaaS Compatible
  • Watch & Reload
  • Module System
  • Max memory reload
  • Cluster Mode
  • Hot reload
  • Development workflow
  • Startup Scripts
  • Auto completion
  • Deployment workflow
  • Keymetrics monitoring
  • API

Answer 2

The simplest approach would just to send the command to the background.

$ node server.js &

Then you can kill the process at a later time. I usually do the following:

$ killall node

Note: I'm running OS X.