How to Run Node.js as Background by Using Forever

2014/04/303 min read

Introduction
Getting Started
Troubleshooting
Running Forever Successfully
Sample Server Code
Conclusion

Introduction

This is for running on Windows. I was able to make it start but couldn't stop it. I'm still looking for the solution. However, a quick solution is to deploy your Node.js web application to Linux, where forever seems to work. If you use Windows for your deployment, you might want to try IIS-node instead.

When getting started with Node.js, you'll notice that when you stop the Node.js command, your HTTP server stops. You might close the command on purpose, or after a long time, the machine may auto-close the command. In these cases, your Node.js HTTP server will not run automatically. So, in this blog, I'll show how to use forever.

Getting Started

I searched online, and it looks like lots of people are using the forever module created by nodejitsu. I have referenced their document about how to use forever: keep-a-nodejs-server-up-with-forever. I copied their server-side code to my local machine and tried to run it in the following environment:

Windows Server 2008 (64-bit)
Node version: 0.10.26
npm 1.4.3
Run as administrator

Troubleshooting

First try: it didn't work. I got different kinds of errors, like the error on this page: forever issue. So I tried the following things:

Deleted all files from the npm folder, under /Users/{yourname}/AppData/Roaming/
Removed all files except my server.js
Tried again, still not working. I tried the following commands, all not working:

forever server.js

forever start server.js

forever node server.js

But this time, I saw the error was looking for the following file. I thought this was a Linux thing, but it looks like forever is looking for this file. Then I manually created the folder root, added the folder .forever under root, and finally added the log file. Actually, you don't need to add the log file — just the folder /root/.forever/ needs to exist.

C:/root/.forever/KsIJ.log

Running Forever Successfully

After I set up all of these and typed the command below, this time even though I closed my command window, the site was still running. It looks like it starts a node.exe as a background process.

forever start server.js

Sample Server Code

Following is the server.js code:

var util = require('util'),
    http = require('http');

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

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

Folder structure when running correctly.

Conclusion

If you look at the following post, you'll notice forever doesn't work well on Windows. I had the same situation — able to start with forever but couldn't stop or list processes. So, there's no point in using it on Windows. Consider deploying to Linux or using IIS-node on Windows instead.

Forever Windows issue

Following are a few links about forever:

Run Ghost with forever

Node.js