Setup a nodejs or any such process on a webserver and make it accessible using nginx.

README.md

Setup a nodejs or any such process on a webserver and make it accessible using nginx.

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This does not use pm2 module, but uses bg process instead.

1. Install nodejs

for debian and ubuntu based distros, do the following.

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

replace 8 with 10 for node v10 source: https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/

2. Install nginx

sudo apt install ngnix -y

3. Configure nginx

Open the configuration file using

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

and replace everything in this block to the below code

. . .
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }

change your port accordingly

5. start your server

Start your server using the normal commands and append & at the end of the command to make it a background process so that it does not terminate when you close the terminal. eg: npm start &

Alternatively, start the process normally using npm start and press CTRL/COMMAND+Z. Then type bg and press enter to send the process to background. This is the same as appending & to the command.

use pm2 for nodejs

6. Restart nginx

sudo systemctl restart nginx

7. open your ip in a tab and have fun!

I use ng serve --host 0.0.0.0 --disable-host-check to test live without building by configuring a webhook that pulls every push to github. Disable host check flag allows to access the ng serve pages on different host.