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

Check out fugue! Apart from launching many workers, you can demonize your node process too!

http://github.com/pgte/fugue

Answer 2

This answer is quite late to the party, but I found that the best solution was to write a shell script that used the both the screen -dmS and nohup commands.

screen -dmS newScreenName nohup node myserver.js >> logfile.log

I also add the >> logfile bit on the end so I can easily save the node console.log() statements.

Why did I use a shell script? Well I also added in an if statement that checked to see if the node myserver.js process was already running.

That way I was able to create a single command line option that both lets me keep the server going and also restart it when I have made changes, which is very helpful for development.

Answer 3

If you are using pm2, you can use it with autorestart set to false:

$ pm2 ecosystem

This will generate a sample ecosystem.config.js:

module.exports = {
  apps: [
    {
      script: './scripts/companies.js',
      autorestart: false,
    },
    {
      script: './scripts/domains.js',
      autorestart: false,
    },
    {
      script: './scripts/technologies.js',
      autorestart: false,
    },
  ],
}

$ pm2 start ecosystem.config.js

Answer 4

This might not be the accepted way, but I do it with screen, especially while in development because I can bring it back up and fool with it if necessary.

screen
node myserver.js
>>CTRL-A then hit D

The screen will detach and survive you logging off. Then you can get it back back doing screen -r. Hit up the screen manual for more details. You can name the screens and whatnot if you like.

Answer 5

To round out the various options suggested, here is one more: the daemon command in GNU/Linux, which you can read about here: http://libslack.org/daemon/manpages/daemon.1.html. (apologies if this is already mentioned in one of the comments above).

Answer 6

If you are running nodejs in linux server, I think this is the best way.

Create a service script and copy to /etc/init/nodejs.conf

start service: sudo service nodejs start

stop service: sudo service nodejs stop

Sevice script

description "DManager node.js server - Last Update: 2012-08-06"
author      "Pedro Muniz - pedro.muniz@geeklab.com.br"

env USER="nodejs" #you have to create this user 
env APPNAME="nodejs" #you can change the service name
env WORKDIR="/home/<project-home-dir>" #set your project home folder here
env COMMAND="/usr/bin/node <server name>" #app.js ?

# used to be: start on startup
# until we found some mounts weren't ready yet while booting:
start on started mountall
stop on shutdown

# Automatically Respawn:
respawn
respawn limit 99 5

pre-start script
    sudo -u $USER echo "[`date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%T.%3NZ`] (sys) Starting" >> /var/log/$APPNAME.log
end script

script
    # Not sure why $HOME is needed, but we found that it is:
    export HOME="<project-home-dir>"  #set your project home folder here
    export NODE_PATH="<project node_path>"

    #log file, grant permission to nodejs user
    exec start-stop-daemon --start --make-pidfile --pidfile /var/run/$APPNAME.pid --chuid $USER --chdir $WORKDIR --exec $COMMAND >> /var/log/$APPNAME.log 2>&1
end script

post-start script
   # Optionally put a script here that will notifiy you node has (re)started
   # /root/bin/hoptoad.sh "node.js has started!"
end script

pre-stop script
    sudo -u $USER echo "[`date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%T.%3NZ`] (sys) Stopping" >> /var/log/$APPNAME.log
end script