How does one start a node.js server as a daemon process?

Question

In Python Twisted, you have the twistd command that helps you with a number of things related to running your application (daemonize it for example).

Ho

Answer 1

If you need your process to daemonize itself, not relaying on forever - you can use the daemonize module.

$ npm install daemonize2

Then just write your server file as in example:

var daemon = require("daemonize2").setup({
    main: "app.js",
    name: "sampleapp",
    pidfile: "sampleapp.pid"
});

switch (process.argv[2]) {

    case "start":
        daemon.start();
        break;

    case "stop":
        daemon.stop();
        break;

    default:
        console.log("Usage: [start|stop]");
}

Mind you, that's rather a low level approach.