How do I run a node.js app as a background service?

Question

Since this post has gotten a lot of attention over the years, I\'ve listed the top solutions per platform at the bottom of this post.

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Original post

Answer 1

If you simply want to run the script uninterrupted until it completes you can use nohup as already mentioned in the answers here. However, none of the answers provide a full command that also logs stdin and stdout.

nohup node index.js >> app.log 2>&1 &

• The >> means append to app.log.
• 2>&1 makes sure that errors are also send to stdout and added to the app.log.
• The ending & makes sure your current terminal is disconnected from command so you can continue working.

If you want to run a node server (or something that should start back up when the server restarts) you should use systemd / systemctl.

Answer 2

I am simply using the daemon npm module:

var daemon = require('daemon');

daemon.daemonize({
    stdout: './log.log'
  , stderr: './log.error.log'
  }
, './node.pid'
, function (err, pid) {
  if (err) {
    console.log('Error starting daemon: \n', err);
    return process.exit(-1);
  }
  console.log('Daemonized successfully with pid: ' + pid);

  // Your Application Code goes here
});

Lately I'm also using mon(1) from TJ Holowaychuk to start and manage simple node apps.

Answer 3

June 2017 Update:
Solution for Linux: (Red hat). Previous comments doesn't work for me. This works for me on Amazon Web Service - Red Hat 7. Hope this works for somebody out there.

A. Create the service file 
sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/myapp.service
[Unit]
Description=Your app
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/ec2-user/meantodos/start.sh
WorkingDirectory=/home/ec2-user/meantodos/

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

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B. Create a shell file
/home/ec2-root/meantodos/start.sh
#!/bin/sh -
sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to 8080
npm start

then:
chmod +rx /home/ec2-root/meantodos/start.sh
(to make this file executable)

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C. Execute the Following

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start myapp
sudo systemctl status myapp

(If there are no errors, execute below.  Autorun after server restarted.)
chkconfig myapp -add

Answer 4

The accepted answer is probably the best production answer, but for a quick hack doing dev work, I found this:

nodejs scriptname.js & didn't work, because nodejs seemed to gobble up the &, and so the thing didn't let me keep using the terminal without scriptname.js dying.

But I put nodejs scriptname.js in a .sh file, and nohup sh startscriptname.sh & worked.

Definitely not a production thing, but it solves the "I need to keep using my terminal and don't want to start 5 different terminals" problem.

Answer 5

You can use Forever, A simple CLI tool for ensuring that a given node script runs continuously (i.e. forever): https://www.npmjs.org/package/forever

Answer 6

UPDATE - As mentioned in one of the answers below, PM2 has some really nice functionality missing from forever. Consider using it.

Original Answer

Use nohup:

nohup node server.js &

EDIT I wanted to add that the accepted answer is really the way to go. I'm using forever on instances that need to stay up. I like to do npm install -g forever so it's in the node path and then just do forever start server.js