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Deploy Node.js app on Ubuntu as Upstart Service - instead of using Forever

Deploying a node app with Forever is great...until your server restarts unexpectedly. Then your app stops running and you have to re-deploy.

To get around this, we're going to run our node app as an Upstart service. Upstart services are great, because, once started, the system auto-restarts them if they fail, or if the server restarts.

###Step 1: Create a service for your node app

  • ssh in as root ssh root@youripaddress
  • Create a node-app.conf file in /etc/init
    IMPORTANT: whatever filename you pick is what you will use to start|stop|restart your service i.e. service node-app start
nano /etc/init/node-app.conf
  • Give the file the following contents
start on filesystem and started networking
respawn
chdir /home/deploy/node-app
env NODE_ENV=production #change this to staging if this is a staging server
env PORT=3000
exec /usr/local/bin/node bin/www
  • Now your app will always start on reboot!
  • You can also now you can start | stop | restart your app with these commands
start node-app
stop node-app
restart node-app #performs a stop and start. This is all we need for deployments

###Step 2: give your deploy user permission to restart the node-app service without requiring a password You can make changes to this entry later by running visudo as root, but for now, just run this.

echo "deploy ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /sbin/restart node-app" >> /etc/sudoers

###Step 3: Adjust your flightplan.js file - remove the forever lines, replacing them with the last line here View full file, minus these changes here

remote.log('Reload application');
remote.sudo('ln -snf ~/' + tmpDir + ' ~/'+appName, {user: username});
remote.exec('sudo restart node-app');
@oddoye-david
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Now that forever is out, does the process restart if it crashes?

@sasijp
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sasijp commented Feb 24, 2016

stop and restart always result in "Unknown instance", if the instance is not already running. so replace the last line with following

echo "deploy ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /sbin/stop node-app, /sbin/start node-app" >> /etc/sudoers

@matt212
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matt212 commented Mar 14, 2016

Hi,

Can anyone help me configure below script on machine restart on ubuntu 14.04 lts
https://gist.github.com/jobsamuel/6d6095d52228461f3c53

@joepie91
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This Gist is DANGEROUS.

If you use this Gist as-is, it will run your application as root, which is a serious security issue. You will want to use setuid to run it under a limited user (you can use the adduser command to create one), like demonstrated in this post.

@paradoxall
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paradoxall commented Sep 30, 2016

in ubuntu dist > 15.04 they uses systemd instead of upstart so my solution was

log to root
su

nano /lib/systemd/system/<service name>.service

and write this

[Unit]
Description=Start <appname> node.js app

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node /home/deploy/<app name>/bin/www
Restart=always

to start and stop service use

service <service name> start
service <service name> stop

to make it start with boot

cd /lib/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl enable <service name>
systemctl add-wants multi-user.target <servicename>.service

@manugo-dev
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Really works @paradoxall Thanks!

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