How to start node.js app on machine boot by creating a boot service

Question

My machine is Ubuntu 16.04. I want to start my node.js application when the machine boots up everytime. According to this post about autostarting services. I tried to make a service by doing the following:

1) I created a script to start node app with node's forever module.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Starting App"

forever -a start /opt/app/app.js

echo "App started"

2) I named this script startApp.sh and put this script inside /etc/init.d/ folder.

3) I ran the command update-rc.d startApp defaults

But I got the error update-rc.d: error: initscript does not exist: /etc/init.d/startApp

What did I do wrong?

Solution

There are multiple ways to achieve this PM2 You can use PM2 which provides you to create a startup script to start up for expected or unexpected machine restarts.

http://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/startup/

Docker I prefer to create Dockerfile and run it with --restart=always tag

If you want to continue with your shell script Then use unix's crontab It's very easy to use & you can configure in minutes

1. Edit crontab run the following replacing the "USER" with your desired runtime user for the node process. If you choose a different user other than yourself, you will have to run this with sudo.

   $ crontab -u USER -e

2. Once in the editor add the following line:

   @reboot /usr/local/bin/forever start /your/path/to/your/index.js else

   @reboot sh /your/path/to/your/startApp.sh

3. Save & confirm file is saved by check command of #1 again

   Note: In my opinion, you should use the full path in crontab file to prevent issues

You can refer this URL reference Ubuntu Cron HowTo