I have no idea what I am doing

cowboycaleb

As a newbie with zero development access, I followed the dummies guide below

Setting up a NodeBB Forum “for Dummies” | Burn after compiling

(burnaftercompiling.com)

It was a miracle but I got the nodebb up and running successfully (I am good at following instructions).

Here are some issues I am facing. Hope somebody can help.

When I close my putty window, the server stops running and the forum is no longer accessible.

How do I start the server and exit the terminal window?

I know this sounds like a dumb questions but please bear with me.

cani

Basic linux method would be to put & at the end of the command you use to start it, like;
./nodebb start &

More information on that method can be found here http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-command-line-run-in-background/

I currently use upstart to run it in background and have it auto startup on box restarting. My nodebb.conf script located in /etc/init looks like this;

#!upstart
#
# An example upstart script for running a Node.js process as a service
# using Forever as the process monitor. For more configuration options
# associated with Forever, see: https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever
#
# You will need to set the environment variables noted below to conform to
# your use case, and should change the description.
#
description "Example upstart script for a Node.js process"

start on startup
stop on shutdown

# This line is needed so that Upstart reports the pid of the Node.js process
# started by Forever rather than Forever's pid.
expect fork

# The following environment variables must be set so as to define
# where Node.js and Forever binaries and the Node.js source code
# can be found.
#
# The example environment variables below assume that Node.js is
# installed into /home/node/local/node by building from source as outlined
# here:
# https://www.exratione.com/2011/07/running-a-nodejs-server-as-a-service-using-$
#
# It should be easy enough to adapt to the paths to be appropriate to a
# package installation, but note that the packages available for Ubuntu in
# the default repositories are far behind the times. Most users will be
# building from source to get a more recent Node.js version.
#
# The full path to the directory containing the node and forever binaries.
# env NODE_BIN_DIR="/home/node/local/node/bin"
# Set the NODE_PATH to the Node.js main node_modules directory.
# env NODE_PATH="/home/node/local/node/lib/node_modules"
# The directory containing the application Javascript file.
# env APPLICATION_DIRECTORY="/home/node/my-application"
# The application start Javascript filename.
# env APPLICATION_START="start-my-application.js"
# Log file path.
# env LOG="/var/log/my-application.log"

env NODE_ENV="development"
env NODE_BIN_DIR=""
env NODE_PATH=""
env APPLICATION_DIRECTORY="/home/user/nodebb"
env APPLICATION_START="app.js"
env LOG="/home/user/nodebb/logs/nodebb.log"

script
    # Add the node executables to the path, which includes Forever if it is
    # installed globally, which it should be.
    PATH=$NODE_BIN_DIR:$PATH
    # The minUptime and spinSleepTime settings stop Forever from thrashing if
    # the application fails immediately on launch. This is generally necessary $
    # avoid loading development servers to the point of failure every time
    # someone makes an error in application initialization code, or bringing do$
    # production servers the same way if a database or other critical service
    # suddenly becomes inaccessible.
    exec forever --sourceDir $APPLICATION_DIRECTORY -a -l $LOG \
         --minUptime 5000 --spinSleepTime 2000 start $APPLICATION_START
end script

pre-stop script
    # Add the node executables to the path.
    PATH=$NODE_BIN_DIR:$PATH
    # Here we're using the pre-stop script to stop the Node.js application
    # process so that Forever is given a chance to do its thing and tidy up
    # its data. Note that doing it this way means that each application that
    # runs under Forever must have a different start file name, regardless of
    # which directory it is in.
    exec forever stop $APPLICATION_START >> $LOG
end script

Blatantly stolen from here https://www.exratione.com/2013/02/nodejs-and-forever-as-a-service-simple-upstart-and-init-scripts-for-ubuntu/ .

This method allows me to type start nodebb and stop nodebb for quick restarting.

There are other ways to do this, but I found this to be my favorite method.

cowboycaleb

dumb it down a little for me...

so basically when I type "$ node app" the system runs the app and its 'stuck' because the app is perpetually running.

When do I need to modify the command to? Is it "$ node app start &"

BarveyHirdman

You could also install forever

npm install -g forever

cd /path/to/nodebb
NODE_ENV=development forever start app.js

(Replace NODE_ENV=development with NODE_ENV=production if you want to deploy it to production environment)

cowboycaleb

@BarveyHirdman said:

You could also install forever
npm install -g forever

cd /path/to/nodebb
NODE_ENV=development forever start app.js
(Replace NODE_ENV=development with NODE_ENV=production if you want to deploy it to production environment)

Thanks, I am running forever now. Seems to work.