How do I run a node.js app as a background service?

Question

Since this post has gotten a lot of attention over the years, I\'ve listed the top solutions per platform at the bottom of this post.

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Original post

Answer 1

UPDATE - As mentioned in one of the answers below, PM2 has some really nice functionality missing from forever. Consider using it.

Original Answer

Use nohup:

nohup node server.js &

EDIT I wanted to add that the accepted answer is really the way to go. I'm using forever on instances that need to stay up. I like to do npm install -g forever so it's in the node path and then just do forever start server.js