Can any node.js experts tell me how I might configure node JS to autostart a server when my machine boots?
I'm on Windows
This isn't something to configure in node.js at all, this is purely OS responsibility (Windows in your case). The most reliable way to achieve this is through a Windows Service.
There's this super easy module that installs a node script as a windows service, it's called node-windows (npm, github, documentation). I've used before and worked like a charm.
var Service = require('node-windows').Service;
// Create a new service object
var svc = new Service({
name:'Hello World',
description: 'The nodejs.org example web server.',
script: 'C:\\path\\to\\helloworld.js'
});
// Listen for the "install" event, which indicates the
// process is available as a service.
svc.on('install',function(){
svc.start();
});
svc.install();
p.s.
I found the thing so useful that I built an even easier to use wrapper around it (npm, github).
Installing it:
npm install -g qckwinsvc
Installing your service:
> qckwinsvc
prompt: Service name: [name for your service]
prompt: Service description: [description for it]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service installed
Uninstalling your service:
> qckwinsvc --uninstall
prompt: Service name: [name of your service]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service stopped
Service uninstalled
If you are using Linux, macOS or Windows pm2 is your friend. It's a process manager that handle clusters very well.
You install it:
npm install -g pm2
Start a cluster of, for example, 3 processes:
pm2 start app.js -i 3
And make pm2 starts them at boot:
pm2 startup
It has an API, an even a monitor interface:
Go to github and read the instructions. It's easy to use and very handy. Best thing ever since forever.
If I'm not wrong, you can start your application using command line and thus also using a batch file. In that case it is not a very hard task to start it with Windows login.
You just create a batch file with the following content:
node C:\myapp.js
and save it with .bat extention. Here myapp.js is your app, which in this example is located in C: drive (spcify the path).
Now you can just throw the batch file in your startup folder which is located at C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Just open it using %appdata% in run dailog box and locate to >Roaming>Microsoft>Windows>Start Menu>Programs>Startup
The batch file will be executed at login time and start your node application from cmd.
This can easily be done manually with the Windows Task Scheduler.
First, install forever.
Then, create a batch file that contains the following:
cd C:\path\to\project\root
call C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\npm\forever.cmd start server.js
exit 0
Lastly, create a scheduled task that runs when you log on. This task should call the batch file.
I would recommend installing your node.js app as a Windows service, and then set the service to run at startup. That should make it a bit easier to control the startup action by using the Windows Services snapin rather than having to add or remove batch files in the Startup folder.
Another service-related question in Stackoverflow provided a couple of (apprently) really good options. Check out How to install node.js as a Windows Service. node-windows looks really promising to me. As an aside, I used similar tools for Java apps that needed to run as services. It made my life a whole lot easier. Hope this helps.
you should try this
npm forever
https://www.npmjs.com/package/forever
Use pm2 to start and run your nodejs processes on windows.
Be sure to read this github discussion of how to set up task scheduler to start pm2: https://github.com/Unitech/pm2/issues/1079
Here is another solution I wrote in C# to auto startup native node server or pm2 server on Windows.
I know there are multiple ways to achieve this as per solutions shared above. I haven't tried all of them but some third party services lack clarity around what are all tasks being run in the background. I have achieved this through a powershell script similar to the one mentioned as windows batch file. I have scheduled it using Windows Tasks Scheduler to run every minute. This has been quite efficient and transparent so far. The advantage I have here is that I am checking the process explicitly before starting it again. This wouldn't cause much overhead to the CPU on the server. Also you don't have to explicitly place the file into the startup folders.
function CheckNodeService ()
{
$node = Get-Process node -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if($node)
{
echo 'Node Running'
}
else
{
echo 'Node not Running'
Start-Process "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" -ArgumentList "app.js" -WorkingDirectory "E:\MyApplication"
echo 'Node started'
}
}
CheckNodeService
Simply use this, install, run and save current process list
https://www.npmjs.com/package/pm2-windows-startup
By my exp., after restart server, need to logon, in order to trigger the auto startup.
Need to create a batch file inside project folder.
Write this code in batch file
#echo off
start npm start
save batch file with myprojectname.bat
Go to run command and press window + R
Enter this command :- shell:common startup
Press ok then folder will be open.
Folder path like as C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
You will be paste your myprojectname.bat file.
You can check also. Need to system restart.
Copied directly from this answer:
You could write a script in any language you want to automate this (even using nodejs) and then just install a shortcut to that script in the user's %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup folder
Related
I have a Node.js app that uses the node's native readline to be able to take command-line inputs.
When launching the app with pm2, the command-line input is unavailable.
Any ideas how to solve this issue? Other than using systemd and creating an init script myself?
Use pm2 to attach to your process and you will see readline, clearline and cursorTo working as expected.
First get your process id with:
$ pm2 id {your-process-name}
[ 7 ]
Let's say it's 7:
$ pm2 attach 7
if you check the pm2 website they clearly mention the following line: Advanced, production process manager for Node.js. So using it in this context is unnecessary as all pm2 does is start your 'node' process and allows you to manage it, the simple way is to use command line args while starting the process.
for example:
I myself use commander for this purpose. it manages all my command line arguments (u can see its usage). and with pm2 i use it like following:
pm2 start server.js --name production -- --env dev -p 3458
notice -- before --env, it is used to separate pm2 arguments from the arguments you want to supply to your process
p.s.
PM2 has more complex usage than this, in the terms of process management, i myself use it for production level deployment. If you want to take input from a user every time s/he starts your app, then you should stick with using node command only
I have downloaded node.js executable. How can I run that executable as windows service?
I cannot use standard node.js installer, since I need to run multiple version of node.js concurrently.
Late to the party, but node-windows will do the trick too.
It also has system logging built in.
There is an API to create scripts from code, i.e.
var Service = require('node-windows').Service;
// Create a new service object
var svc = new Service({
name:'Hello World',
description: 'The nodejs.org example web server.',
script: 'C:\\path\\to\\helloworld.js'
});
// Listen for the "install" event, which indicates the
// process is available as a service.
svc.on('install',function(){
svc.start();
});
svc.install();
FD: I'm the author of this module.
I found the thing so useful that I built an even easier to use wrapper around it (npm, github).
Installing it:
npm install -g qckwinsvc
Installing your service:
qckwinsvc
prompt: Service name: [name for your service]
prompt: Service description: [description for it]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service installed
Uninstalling your service:
qckwinsvc --uninstall
prompt: Service name: [name of your service]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service stopped
Service uninstalled
WinSer is a node.js friendly wrapper around the popular NSSM (Non-Sucking Service Manager)
From this blog
Next up, I wanted to host node as a service, just like IIS. This way
it’d start up with my machine, run in the background, restart
automatically if it crashes and so forth.
This is where nssm, the non-sucking service manager, enters the
picture. This tool lets you host a normal .exe as a Windows service.
Here are the commands I used to setup an instance of the your node
application as a service, open your cmd like administrator and type
following commands:
nssm.exe install service_name c:\your_nodejs_directory\node.exe c:\your_application_directory\server.js
net start service_name
I'm not addressing the question directly, but providing an alternative that might also meet your requirement in a more node.js fashion way.
Functionally the requirements are:
Have the logic (app) running in the background
Be able to start/stop the logic
Automatically start the logic when system boots up
These requirements can be satisfied by using a process manager (PM) and making the process manager start on system startup. Two good PMs that are Windows-friendly are:
PM2
forever
To make the PM start automatically, the most simple way is to create a scheduled task with a "At Startup" trigger:
Since qckwinsvc has not been updated for a while there's a new version called qckwinsvc2 (npm, github)
It now supports args passed to the service. It also keeps a local cache so you don't have to provide a path every time you want to perform an action
Use the now arg to start the service as soon as it's installed
qckwinsvc2 install name="Hello" description="Hello World" path="C:\index.js" args="--y" now
qckwinsvc2 uninstall name="Hello"
qckwinsvc2 list
The process manager + task scheduler approach I posted a year ago works well with some one-off service installations. But recently I started to design system in a micro-service fashion, with many small services talking to each other via IPC. So manually configuring each service has become unbearable.
Towards the goal of installing services without manual configuration, I created serman, a command line tool (install with npm i -g serman) to install an executable as a service. All you need to write (and only write once) is a simple service configuration file along with your executable. Run
serman install <path_to_config_file>
will install the service. stdout and stderr are all logged. For more info, take a look at the project website.
A working configuration file is very simple, as demonstrated below. But it also has many useful features such as <env> and <persistent_env> below.
<service>
<id>hello</id>
<name>hello</name>
<description>This service runs the hello application</description>
<executable>node.exe</executable>
<!--
{{dir}} will be expanded to the containing directory of your
config file, which is normally where your executable locates
-->
<arguments>"{{dir}}\hello.js"</arguments>
<logmode>rotate</logmode>
<!-- OPTIONAL FEATURE:
NODE_ENV=production will be an environment variable
available to your application, but not visible outside
of your application
-->
<env name="NODE_ENV" value="production"/>
<!-- OPTIONAL FEATURE:
FOO_SERVICE_PORT=8989 will be persisted as an environment
variable machine-wide.
-->
<persistent_env name="FOO_SERVICE_PORT" value="8989" />
</service>
https://nssm.cc/ service helper good for create windows service by batch file
i use from nssm & good working for any app & any file
After update strongloop to v2.10 slc stops writing logs.
Also I couldn't make the app to start in production mode.
/etc/init/app.conf
#!upstart
description "StrongLoop app"
start on startup
stop on shutdown
env NODE_ENV=production
script
exec slc run /home/ubuntu/app/ \
-l /home/ubuntu/app/app.log \
-p /var/run/app.pid
end script
Can anybody check my upstart config or provide another working copy?
Are you were writing the pid to a file so that you can use it to send SIGUSR2 to the process to trigger log re-opening from logrotate?
Assuming you are using Upstart 1.4+ (Ubuntu 12.04 or newer), then you would be better off letting slc run log to its stdout and let Upstart take care of writing it to a file so that log rotation is done for you:
#!upstart
description "StrongLoop app"
start on startup
stop on shutdown
# assuming this is /etc/init/app.conf,
# stdout+stderr logged to: /var/log/upstart/app.log
console log
env NODE_ENV=production
exec /usr/local/bin/slc run --cluster=CPUs /home/ubuntu/app
The log rotation for "free" is nice, but the biggest benefit to this approach is Upstart can log errors that slc run reports even if they are a crash while trying to set up its internal logging, which makes debugging a lot easier.
Aside from what it means to your actual application, the only effect NODE_ENV has on slc run is to set the default number of cluster workers to the number of detected CPU cores, which literally translates to --cluster=CPUs.
Another problem I find is the node/npm path prefix not being in the $PATH as used by Upstart, so I normally put the full paths for executables in my Upstart jobs.
Service Installer
You could also try using strong-service-install, which is a module used by slc pm-install to install strong-pm as an OS service:
$ npm install -g strong-service-install
$ sudo sl-svc-install --name app --user ubuntu --cwd /home/ubuntu/app -- slc run --cluster=CPUs .
Note the spaces around the -- before slc run
I have a node.js project that compiles less files to css when I start the app. I do this by modifying the start script in package.json like so:
{
// omitted for brevity
start: { lessc public/stylesheets/styles.less > public/stylesheets/styles.css; node app.js; }
}
This works nicely locally, but not at all on my Windows Azure instance. Either because less needs to be installed globally on the machine for this to work, or because Azure doesn't run npm start. Or both. Either way, I need another solution!
I thought custom deployments was the answer (I'm using git remote deployment) and I tried modifying the deploy.cmd to include
call "lessc public/stylesheets/styles.less > public/stylesheets/styles.css;"
No joy. I even tried
call "%SITE_ROOT%/node_modules/less/bin/lessc %SITE_ROOT%/public/stylesheets/styles.less > %SITE_ROOT%/public/stylesheets/styles.css;
Am I coming at this the wrong way? How can I keep the compiled css files out of my source control and compile them on the server after deployment to Azure?
Thanks!
OK, I finally have this going, I think.
For some reason, even though the physical file is on the disk (I can see them with my FTP client), Azure is not letting me run lessc in the \node_modules\less\bin folder, but it does let me run the version in the \node_modules\.bin folder.
In the end, I added the following lines to my deploy.cmd file, and it worked!
IF NOT DEFINED LESS_COMPILER (
SET LESS_COMPILER=%DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%\node_modules\.bin\lessc
)
call %LESS_COMPILER% %DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%\public\stylesheets\styles.less > %DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%\public\stylesheets\styles.css
I have downloaded node.js executable. How can I run that executable as windows service?
I cannot use standard node.js installer, since I need to run multiple version of node.js concurrently.
Late to the party, but node-windows will do the trick too.
It also has system logging built in.
There is an API to create scripts from code, i.e.
var Service = require('node-windows').Service;
// Create a new service object
var svc = new Service({
name:'Hello World',
description: 'The nodejs.org example web server.',
script: 'C:\\path\\to\\helloworld.js'
});
// Listen for the "install" event, which indicates the
// process is available as a service.
svc.on('install',function(){
svc.start();
});
svc.install();
FD: I'm the author of this module.
I found the thing so useful that I built an even easier to use wrapper around it (npm, github).
Installing it:
npm install -g qckwinsvc
Installing your service:
qckwinsvc
prompt: Service name: [name for your service]
prompt: Service description: [description for it]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service installed
Uninstalling your service:
qckwinsvc --uninstall
prompt: Service name: [name of your service]
prompt: Node script path: [path of your node script]
Service stopped
Service uninstalled
WinSer is a node.js friendly wrapper around the popular NSSM (Non-Sucking Service Manager)
From this blog
Next up, I wanted to host node as a service, just like IIS. This way
it’d start up with my machine, run in the background, restart
automatically if it crashes and so forth.
This is where nssm, the non-sucking service manager, enters the
picture. This tool lets you host a normal .exe as a Windows service.
Here are the commands I used to setup an instance of the your node
application as a service, open your cmd like administrator and type
following commands:
nssm.exe install service_name c:\your_nodejs_directory\node.exe c:\your_application_directory\server.js
net start service_name
I'm not addressing the question directly, but providing an alternative that might also meet your requirement in a more node.js fashion way.
Functionally the requirements are:
Have the logic (app) running in the background
Be able to start/stop the logic
Automatically start the logic when system boots up
These requirements can be satisfied by using a process manager (PM) and making the process manager start on system startup. Two good PMs that are Windows-friendly are:
PM2
forever
To make the PM start automatically, the most simple way is to create a scheduled task with a "At Startup" trigger:
Since qckwinsvc has not been updated for a while there's a new version called qckwinsvc2 (npm, github)
It now supports args passed to the service. It also keeps a local cache so you don't have to provide a path every time you want to perform an action
Use the now arg to start the service as soon as it's installed
qckwinsvc2 install name="Hello" description="Hello World" path="C:\index.js" args="--y" now
qckwinsvc2 uninstall name="Hello"
qckwinsvc2 list
The process manager + task scheduler approach I posted a year ago works well with some one-off service installations. But recently I started to design system in a micro-service fashion, with many small services talking to each other via IPC. So manually configuring each service has become unbearable.
Towards the goal of installing services without manual configuration, I created serman, a command line tool (install with npm i -g serman) to install an executable as a service. All you need to write (and only write once) is a simple service configuration file along with your executable. Run
serman install <path_to_config_file>
will install the service. stdout and stderr are all logged. For more info, take a look at the project website.
A working configuration file is very simple, as demonstrated below. But it also has many useful features such as <env> and <persistent_env> below.
<service>
<id>hello</id>
<name>hello</name>
<description>This service runs the hello application</description>
<executable>node.exe</executable>
<!--
{{dir}} will be expanded to the containing directory of your
config file, which is normally where your executable locates
-->
<arguments>"{{dir}}\hello.js"</arguments>
<logmode>rotate</logmode>
<!-- OPTIONAL FEATURE:
NODE_ENV=production will be an environment variable
available to your application, but not visible outside
of your application
-->
<env name="NODE_ENV" value="production"/>
<!-- OPTIONAL FEATURE:
FOO_SERVICE_PORT=8989 will be persisted as an environment
variable machine-wide.
-->
<persistent_env name="FOO_SERVICE_PORT" value="8989" />
</service>
https://nssm.cc/ service helper good for create windows service by batch file
i use from nssm & good working for any app & any file