Running a node app is easy, however to bring it onto the production level isn't. The followings are the tools and steps I use to run my node apps on an Ubuntu server on linode.
# sudo adduser <username>
$ sudo adduser nodejs --home /home/nodejs --shell /bin/bash
# password: your_password
# fullname: nodejs
# only `nodejs` and nginx user can open more files
$ sudo su
$ echo "nodejs soft nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
$ echo "nodejs hard nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
$ echo "www-data hard nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
$ echo "www-data hard nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
$ echo "session required pam_limits.so" >> /etc/pam.d/common-session
$ exit
The problem with node is that you have to manually start your app with node your_app.js on terminal through ssh. However if you close the connection it shuts down. Therefore we have to run it as daemon which means it will automatically start at server start and gives you an easy way to stop or restart it through some simple commands. Here we can use a build-in tool from Ubuntu call upstart. You can modify the example file upstart.conf to fit your app.
Create the script
$ cd /etc/init/
$ sudo touch your_app_name.conf
Edit the script
$ sudo vi your_app_name.conf
Copy from the example file and modify it to fit your need
Start your app
$ start your_app_name
Stop your app
$ stop your_app_name
Restart your app
$ restart your_app_name
node app crashes for any shitty reason like undefined variables. With monit you don't have to worry about that, it monitors your app and if it dies monit will restart it for you. Please see the example file monitrc to setup your own monit script. However don't forget you still have to log for errors and fix them.
$ sudo apt-get install monit
- edit /etc/default/monit and set the "startup" variable to 1
- edit /etc/monit/monitrc and use the example file monitrc
$ sudo /etc/init.d/monit start
$ sudo monit start your_app_name
The reason why we put a nginx server in front while we can use node to get all the request directly is that nginx runs faster with serving static files(css, js, img) and also it is more stable. We can easily use it as a reverse proxy to load balance across multiple node instances.
Check out the example code -
nginx/nginx.confandvhost.conf
Deploying a node app manually can be a pain in the ass. Therefore I wrote this simple bash script to do the job for me. Basically what it does is to pull your project from github, remove or switch config files from dev mode to production mode, stop services, remove lock file, adding tail to current app and switch it with the one that just pull down form github then restart the app.
Check out the example code -
deploy.sh
It took me a lot of time finding how to do all these, hope these samples help. If you find something wrong or you have better solutions, you are welcome to send pull requests :)
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Copyright (c) 2011 dreamerslab <ben@dreamerslab.com>
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