How to run Node.js as a background process and never die?

Question

I connect to the linux server via putty SSH. I tried to run it as a background process like this:

$ node server.js &

However, after 2.5

Answer 1

To run command as a system service on debian with sysv init:

Copy skeleton script and adapt it for your needs, probably all you have to do is to set some variables. Your script will inherit fine defaults from /lib/init/init-d-script, if something does not fits your needs - override it in your script. If something goes wrong you can see details in source /lib/init/init-d-script. Mandatory vars are DAEMON and NAME. Script will use start-stop-daemon to run your command, in START_ARGS you can define additional parameters of start-stop-daemon to use.

cp /etc/init.d/skeleton /etc/init.d/myservice
chmod +x /etc/init.d/myservice
nano /etc/init.d/myservice

/etc/init.d/myservice start
/etc/init.d/myservice stop

That is how I run some python stuff for my wikimedia wiki:

...
DESC="mediawiki articles converter"
DAEMON='/home/mss/pp/bin/nslave'
DAEMON_ARGS='--cachedir /home/mss/cache/'
NAME='nslave'
PIDFILE='/var/run/nslave.pid'
START_ARGS='--background --make-pidfile --remove-pidfile --chuid mss --chdir /home/mss/pp/bin'

export PATH="/home/mss/pp/bin:$PATH"

do_stop_cmd() {
    start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 \
        $STOP_ARGS \
        ${PIDFILE:+--pidfile ${PIDFILE}} --name $NAME
    RETVAL="$?"
    [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
    rm -f $PIDFILE
    return $RETVAL
}

Besides setting vars I had to override do_stop_cmd because of python substitutes the executable, so service did not stop properly.