Install and Setup Node.js to Run Forever

Posted by Glen Arrowsmith on June 21, 2011

Obsoleted!

This article is pretty old and was never very good to start with. A much better solution is Deploying Node.js With Upstart and Monit

Install Node.js

$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install git-core curl build-essential openssl libssl-dev $ git clone https://github.com/joyent/node.git && cd node
I had trouble using the latest (head) verson of node so I used an older version which is optional.
git checkout origin/v0.4
If you don’t want the older version, skip the previous command.
$ ./configure $ make $ sudo make install $ node -v

Install Node Package Manager (NPM)

$ curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh $ npm -v

Install Forever

Next, lets make it persistent using Forever, so once we logoff it still runs and will restart even if node throws an error.
sudo npm install forever --global

Make a Test Script

Create a file called test.js and paste this into it.
var util = require('util'), http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) { res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'}); res.write('hello, i know nodejitsu.') res.end(); }).listen(8000);

/* server started */ util.puts('> hello world running on port 8000');

Run it Forever (until you kill it)

forever start test.js

You should be able to see it here
ps axl | grep node
And here
forever list
You can kill it using
forever stop 0
Where 0 is the index of your code in the forever list.

Time to start javascripting.