node + runit

runit uses a directory structure along the lines of:

  /etc/sv/<appname>/
      env/
      log/

and in the <appname> dir it expects to find a "run" bash script - for this example the node app has been installed in /home/myapp/mynodeapp/ where "myapp" is the user to run the app under and is started by "node server.js".

environment vars are stored as files inside of /etc/sv/<appname>/env/

  env/NODE_ENV 
  env/NODE_PATH

and the contents of the files are what you want the environment var to be set to

logging is handled the same way - you create a "run" bash script in the log/ dir that contains how you want to redirect stdio, I almost always use the same thing:

#!/bin/sh
exec chpst -umyapp svlogd -tt /var/log/appname

run script template for the app:

#!/bin/bash -e

envdir=$PWD/env
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
APP_ROOT=`readlink -f /home/myapp/mynodeapp`

if [ -s /home/myapp/.nvm/nvm.sh ]; then
  . /home/myapp/.nvm/nvm.sh
fi

cd $APP_ROOT

exec 2>&1 chpst -e $envdir -u myapp node server.js


To start runit - add the following to /etc/init/runsvdir.conf and start the service

# for runit - manage /usr/sbin/runsvdir-start
start on runlevel 2
start on runlevel 3
start on runlevel 4
start on runlevel 5
stop on shutdown
respawn
exec /usr/sbin/runsvdir-start