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.
Original post:
I want my node.js server to run in the background, i.e.: when I close my terminal I want my server to keep running. I've googled this and came up with this tutorial, however it doesn't work as intended. So instead of using that daemon script, I thought I just used the output redirection (the 2>&1 >> file
part), but this too does not exit – I get a blank line in my terminal, like it's waiting for output/errors.
I've also tried to put the process in the background, but as soon as I close my terminal the process is killed as well.
So how can I leave it running when I shut down my local computer?
Top solutions:
- Systemd (Linux)
- Launchd (Mac)
- node-windows (Windows)
- PM2 (Node.js)
Best Answer
Copying my own answer from How do I run a Node.js application as its own process?
2015 answer: nearly every Linux distro 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):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 onchmod +x myapp.js
.Copy your service file into the
/etc/systemd/system
.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).