service

This module allows you to turn your node app into a linux init.d daemon with a minimum of hassle. It requires daemon.node.

If you have npm, installation is just:

npm install service

First, write a wrapper/preamble:

#!/usr/local/bin/node

require('service').run({
	lockFile: '/var/run/my_app.pid',
	logFile : '/var/log/my_app.log',
});

// your app goes here...

Then execute it:

./wrapper.js [start|stop|restart|status|simple]

The first commands do what you would expect, running the app as a daemon. The simple command allows you to run the app in interactive mode for testing.

In daemon mode, output sent during startup will be echo'd to the console, while anything sent after the first timer/event will go to the log file.

Unfortunately chkconfig requires extra comment lines at the top of the file that aren't node compatible, so you may want to call your js wrapper from a shell script like this:

#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 2345 95 20
# description: my_app
# processname: node
/usr/local/my_app/wrapper.js "$@"

Then to get everything going:

ln -s /usr/local/my_app/init.sh /etc/init.d/my_app
chkconfig --add my_app
chkconfig my_app on
/etc/init.d/my_app start