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

node-deploy-as-upstart-service.md

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');

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.

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

Really works @paradoxall Thanks!