How can I automatically start a node.js application in Amazon Linux AMI on aws?

Question

Is there a brief guide to explain how to start up a application when the instance starts up and running? If it were one of the services installed through yum then I guess I can use /sbin/chkconfig to add it to the service. (To make it sure, is it correct?)

However, I just want to run the program which was not installed through yum. To run node.js program, I will have to run script sudo node app.js at home directory whenever the system boots up.

I am not used to Amazon Linux AMI so I am having little trouble finding a 'right' way to run some script automatically on every boot.

Is there an elegant way to do this?

Answer 1

One way is to create an upstart job. That way your app will start once Linux loads, will restart automatically if it crashes, and you can start / stop / restart it by sudo start yourapp / sudo stop yourapp / sudo restart yourapp.

Here are beginning steps:

1) Install upstart utility (may be pre-installed if you use a standard Amazon Linux AMI):

sudo yum install upstart 

For Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install upstart 

2) Create upstart script for your node app:

in /etc/init add file yourappname.conf with the following lines of code:

#!upstart description "your app name"  start on started mountall stop on shutdown  # Automatically Respawn: respawn respawn limit 99 5  env NODE_ENV=development  # Warning: this runs node as root user, which is a security risk # in many scenarios, but upstart-ing a process as a non-root user # is outside the scope of this question exec node /path_to_your_app/app.js >> /var/log/yourappname.log 2>&1 

3) start your app by sudo start yourappname

Answer 2

You can use forever-service for provisioning node script as a service and automatically starting during boots. Following commands will do the needful,

npm install -g forever-service forever-service install test 

This will provision app.js in the current directory as a service via forever. The service will automatically restart every time system is restarted. Also when stopped it will attempt a graceful stop. This script provisions the logrotate script as well.

Github url: https://github.com/zapty/forever-service

As of now forever-service supports Amazon Linux, CentOS, Redhat support for other Linux distro, Mac and Windows are in works..

NOTE: I am the author of forever-service.

Answer 3

Quick solution for you would be to start your app from /etc/rc.local ; just add your command there.

But if you want to go the elegant way, you'll have to package your application in a rpm file, have a startup script that goes in /etc/rc.d so that you can use chkconfig on your app, then install the rpm on your instance.

Maybe this or this help. (or just google for "creating rpm packages")