Installing Multiple Node Apps on VPS Forever

###Install Forever (Globally)

Forever is to ensure your node app gets run forever. That means if it crashes, it will restart for you.

npm install forever -g

###Start with Forever

cd /var/www/nodeapp.com/       // Goto Your NodeApp path

# Install the packages, if you haven't
npm install

# Start forever, with minimum uptime 10 sec between launches if restart
# Assuming app.js is your application main script
forever start --spinSleepTime 10000 app.js

###Start with Forever, truly forever

Your app is not truly running forever. If your VPS crash, then forever is not being started.. Hence, you need a cronjob and this starter.sh in your home folder. You can nano ~/starter.sh and copy the following:

#!/bin/sh

if [ $(ps -e -o uid,cmd | grep $UID | grep node | grep -v grep | wc -l | tr -s "\n") -eq 0 ]
then
        export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
        forever start --spinSleepTime 10000 --sourceDir /var/www/nodeapp.com app.js >> /var/www/nodeapp.com/log.txt 2>&1
fi

Then crontab -e, and add the following:

@reboot /path/to/starter.sh

To know where your path to starter.sh is, use pwd at the directory. That’s it! To test your script is correct, you can:

forever stopall
# Make sure the script can be executed
chmod +x starter.sh
~/starter.sh
forever list
# Should see 1 running process

Or reboot your VPS to see that it gets truly run forever and ever :)

##Multiple Node Apps

To deploy multiple node apps, repeat (except for installing node, git, forever, crontab).

Assuming I have another app call nodeapp2, these are the changes:

/var/www/nodeapp2.com/ – contains the node app

nodeapp2.com.conf – for nginx configuration (with a different port)

starter.sh – add another line for the new node app to forever start