I have installed forever on shared hosting Cpanel for node js application when I run forever start app.js, node js application works on the server.
warn: --minUptime not set. Defaulting to: 1000ms
warn: --spinSleepTime not set. Your script will exit if it does not stay up for at least 1000ms
info: Forever processing file: app.js
But when I close terminal or console then node app stopped working. Any suggestions around it?
Closing the terminal will typically close the application running. Consider using tmux or screen to launch the app or also nohup.
Launching this way should be considered a short-term solution. You probably want to look at how your specific Linux distribution handles startup scripts and services.
like maldina said closing forever will stop your app consider
consider upstart (it runs tasks when the computer is started)
you basiclly create a conf file and place it in your init folder "var/etc/init"
the file content should look like this
#!upstart
description "my-app"
start on started mountall
stop on shutdown
# Automatically Respawn:
respawn
respawn limit 99 5
env NODE_ENV=production
exec node /somepath/myapp/server.js >> /var/log/myapp.log 2>&1
you can use the following commands to manage your app
sudo start my-app
sudo stop my-app
sudo restart my-app
So I'm really new into loading the node server on AWS,
basically I followed some guide to start node from etc/init
so I have a file like that in etc/init
menuserver.conf
#!upstart
description "menu-creator server"
start on started mountall
stop on shutdown
# Automatically Respawn:
respawn
respawn limit 99 5
env NODE_ENV=development
# Warning: this runs node as root user, which is a security risk
# in many scenarios, but upstart-ing a process as a non-root user
# is outside the scope of this question
exec node /home/ec2-user/MenuCreator/app.js >> /var/log/yourappname.log 2>&1
I have updated the server code, and wish to restart the server, how to do it?
as I'm just starting out, I don't care so much for the security risks.
I've tried etc/init.d/menuserver restart,
but actually menuserver isn't found in init.d.
looking for a quick way to restart the program, and also for a long term good practice guide for how to setup and restart the server.
(I think I heard Forever is recommended... is it?)
Try setting pm2 on server. You can easily restart server then. Study more about pm2
http://pm2.keymetrics.io/
sudo stop/start/restart service name worked for me,
example:
sudo stop menuserver
Couldn't seem to find a direct answer around here.
I'm not sure if I should run ./myBinary as a Cron process or if I should run "go run myapp.go"
What's an effective way to make sure that it is always running?
Sorry I'm used to Apache and Nginx.
Also what are best practices for deploying a Go app? I want everything (preferably) all served on the same server. Just like how my development environment is like.
I read something else that used S3, but, I really don't want to use S3.
Use the capabilities your init process provides. You're likely running system with either Systemd or Upstart. They've both got really easy descriptions of services and can ensure your app runs with the right privileges, is restarted when anything goes down, and that the output is are handled correctly.
For quick Upstart description look here, your service description is likely to be just:
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]
setuid the_username_your_app_runs_as
exec /path/to/your/app --options
For quick Systemd description look here, your service is likely to be just:
[Unit]
Description=Your service
[Service]
User=the_username_your_app_runs_as
ExecStart=/path/to/your/app --options
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
You can put it in an inifiny loop, such as:
#! /bin/sh
while true; do
go run myapp.go
sleep 2 # Just in case
done
Hence, once the app dies due some reason, it will be run again.
You can put it in a script and run it in background using:
$ nohup ./my-script.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 &
You may want to go for virtual terminal utility like screen here. Example:
screen -S myapp # create screen with name myapp
cd ... # to your app directory
go run myapp.go # or go install and then ./myappfrom go bin dir
Ctrl-a+d # to go out of screen
If you want to return to the screen:
screen -r myapp
EDIT: this solution will persist the process when you go out of terminal, but won't restart it when it'll crash.
After my preparation and installation of Ghost, I'm stuck with setting my DO Ubuntu to auto-start itself on server restart. I was suggested to use forever, and I do use it, however as far as I can understand from the concept of it; forever is just to keep the process running once it's started, and it vanishes (needs to be manually started) on each restart.
I'm looking for a solid solution that will keep multiple nodejs apps alive, even when the server is restarted or completely crashed.
For howtoinstallghost.com, allghostthemes.com, ghostforbeginners.com we use pm2 to keep Ghost running. We have a write up on how to setup pm2 here:
http://www.allaboutghost.com/keep-ghost-running-with-pm2/
DigitalOcean's one-click Ghost app use an Upstart script to have Ghost start on boot. It looks like:
description "Ghost: Just a blogging platform"
start on (local-filesystems and net-device-up IFACE=eth0)
stop on runlevel [!12345]
# If the process quits unexpectedly trigger a respawn
respawn
setuid ghost
setgid ghost
env NODE_ENV=production
chdir /var/www/ghost
exec /usr/local/bin/npm start --production
pre-stop exec /usr/local/bin/npm stop --production
and it is installed to /etc/init/ghost.conf This has the added benefit of allowing you manage it like any other service on your server with commands like sudo service ghost restart
You want to set it up as an init.d script so that you can start it or stop it as a service (and set it up to autostart using chkconfig).
Details are here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBootupHowto
Note that's in addition to using things like Forever and Monit to restart on service crash and so on.
What is the best way to deploy Node.js?
I have a Dreamhost VPS (that's what they call a VM), and I have been able to install Node.js and set up a proxy. This works great as long as I keep the SSH connection that I started node with open.
2016 answer: nearly every Linux distribution comes with systemd, which means forever, monit, PM2, etc. are no longer necessary - your OS already handles these tasks.
Make a myapp.service file (replacing 'myapp' with your app's name, obviously):
[Unit]
Description=My app
[Service]
ExecStart=/var/www/myapp/app.js
Restart=always
User=nobody
# Note Debian/Ubuntu uses 'nogroup', RHEL/Fedora uses 'nobody'
Group=nogroup
Environment=PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
Environment=NODE_ENV=production
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/myapp
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Note if you're new to Unix: /var/www/myapp/app.js should have #!/usr/bin/env node on the very first line and have the executable mode turned on chmod +x myapp.js.
Copy your service file into the /etc/systemd/system folder.
Tell systemd about the new service with systemctl daemon-reload.
Start it with systemctl start myapp.
Enable it to run on boot with systemctl enable myapp.
See logs with journalctl -u myapp
This is taken from How we deploy node apps on Linux, 2018 edition, which also includes commands to generate an AWS/DigitalOcean/Azure CloudConfig to build Linux/node servers (including the .service file).
Use Forever. It runs Node.js programs in separate processes and restarts them if any dies.
Usage:
forever start example.js to start a process.
forever list to see list of all processes started by forever
forever stop example.js to stop the process, or forever stop 0 to stop the process with index 0 (as shown by forever list).
I've written about my deployment method here: Deploying node.js apps
In short:
Use git post-receive hook
Jake for the build tool
Upstart as a service wrapper for node
Monit to monitor and restart applications it they go down
nginx to route requests to different applications on the same server
pm2 does the tricks.
Features are: Monitoring, hot code reload, built-in load balancer, automatic startup script, and resurrect/dump processes.
You can use monit, forever, upstart or systemd to start your server.
You can use Varnish or HAProxy instead of Nginx (Nginx is known not to work with websockets).
As a quick and dirty solution you can use nohup node your_app.js & to prevent your app terminating with your server, but forever, monit and other proposed solutions are better.
I made an Upstart script currently used for my apps:
description "YOUR APP NAME"
author "Capy - http://ecapy.com"
env LOG_FILE=/var/log/node/miapp.log
env APP_DIR=/var/node/miapp
env APP=app.js
env PID_NAME=miapp.pid
env USER=www-data
env GROUP=www-data
env POST_START_MESSAGE_TO_LOG="miapp HAS BEEN STARTED."
env NODE_BIN=/usr/local/bin/node
env PID_PATH=/var/opt/node/run
env SERVER_ENV="production"
######################################################
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [016]
respawn
respawn limit 99 5
pre-start script
mkdir -p $PID_PATH
mkdir -p /var/log/node
end script
script
export NODE_ENV=$SERVER_ENV
exec start-stop-daemon --start --chuid $USER:$GROUP --make-pidfile --pidfile $PID_PATH/$PID_NAME --chdir $APP_DIR --exec $NODE_BIN -- $APP >> $LOG_FILE 2>&1
end script
post-start script
echo $POST_START_MESSAGE_TO_LOG >> $LOG_FILE
end script
Customize all before #########, create a file in /etc/init/your-service.conf and paste it there.
Then you can:
start your-service
stop your-service
restart your-service
status your-service
I've written a pretty comprehensive guide to deploying Node.js, with example files:
Tutorial: How to Deploy Node.js Applications, With Examples
It covers things like http-proxy, SSL and Socket.IO.
Here's a longer article on solving this problem with systemd: http://savanne.be/articles/deploying-node-js-with-systemd/
Some things to keep in mind:
Who will start your process monitoring? Forever is a great tool, but it needs a monitoring tool to keep itself running. That's a bit silly, why not just use your init system?
Can you adequately monitor your processes?
Are you running multiple backends? If so, do you have provisions in place to prevent any of them from bringing down the others in terms of resource usage?
Will the service be needed all the time? If not, consider socket activation (see the article).
All of these things are easily done with systemd.
If you have root access you would better set up a daemon so that it runs safe and sound in the background. You can read how to do just that for Debian and Ubuntu in blog post Run Node.js as a Service on Ubuntu.
Forever will do the trick.
#Kevin: You should be able to kill processes fine. I would double check the documentation a bit. If you can reproduce the error it would be great to post it as an issue on GitHub.
Try this: http://www.technology-ebay.de/the-teams/mobile-de/blog/deploying-node-applications-with-capistrano-github-nginx-and-upstart.html
A great and detailed guide for deploying Node.js apps with Capistrano, Upstart and Nginx
As Box9 said, Forever is a good choice for production code. But it is also possible to keep a process going even if the SSH connection is closed from the client.
While not necessarily a good idea for production, this is very handy when in the middle of long debug sessions, or to follow the console output of lengthy processes, or whenever is useful to disconnect your SSH connection, but keep the terminal alive in the server to reconnect later (like starting the Node.js application at home and reconnecting to the console later at work to check how things are going).
Assuming that your server is a *nix box, you can use the screen command from the shell to do keep the process running even if the client SSH is closed. You can download/install screen from the web if not already installed (look for a package for your distribution if Linux, or use MacPorts if OS X).
It works as following:
When you first open the SSH connection, type 'screen' - this will start your screen session.
Start working as normal (i.e. start your Node.js application)
When you are done, close your terminal. Your server process(es) will continue running.
To reconnect to your console, ssh back to the server, login, and enter 'screen -r' to reconnect. Your old console context will pop back ready for you to resume using it.
To exit screen, while connected to the server, type 'exit' on the console prompt - that will drop you onto the regular shell.
You can have multiple screen sessions running concurrently like this if you need, and you can connect to any of it from any client. Read the documentation online for all the options.
Forever is a good option for keeping apps running (and it's npm installable as a module which is nice).
But for more serious 'deployment' -- things like remote management of deploying, restarting, running commands etc -- I would use capistrano with the node extension.
https://github.com/loopj/capistrano-node-deploy
https://paastor.com is a relatively new service that does the deploy for you, to a VPS or other server. There is a CLI to push code. Paastor has a free tier, at least it did at the time of posting this.
In your case you may use the upstart daemon. For a complete deployment solution, I may suggest capistrano. Two useful guides are How to setup Node.js env and How to deploy via capistrano + upstart.
Try node-deploy-server. It is a complex toolset for deploying an application onto your private servers. It is written in Node.js and uses npm for installation.