Example script for running a node app as a service under RHEL6 (sudo start. See the comments for usage.

myapp.conf

#!upstart
description "myapp nodejs server"
author      "Mitch Allen"

start on startup
stop on shutdown

respawn
expect fork
expect daemon

nice -5

script
    export HOME="/export/home/MY-USER"

    echo $$ > /var/run/myapp.pid
    su --session-command="/usr/bin/nodejs $HOME/test/server.js  >> /var/log/myapp.sys.log 2>&1" root &
end script

pre-start script
    # Date format same as (new Date()).toISOString() for consistency
    echo "[`date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%T.%3NZ`] (sys) Starting" >> /var/log/myapp.sys.log
end script

pre-stop script
    rm /var/run/myapp.pid
    echo "[`date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%T.%3NZ`] (sys) Stopping" >> /var/log/myapp.sys.log
end script

Note that this is for RHEL6.

Add the contents of this gist to a file and edit for your nodejs deployment:

sudo vim /etc/init/myapp.conf

Example usage:

Start, view status, stop:

sudo start myapp
sudo status myapp
sudo stop myapp

Start, view process, stop, view process:

sudo start myapp
ps aux | grep nodejs
sudo stop myapp
ps aux | grep nodejs

Start then tail the log (allowing you to monitor the output of your node app):

sudo start myapp
sudo tail -f /var/log/myapp.sys.log

Tail the log from a remote client (substituting USER and SERVER for your environment):

ssh USER@SERVER tail -f /var/log/myapp.sys.log

References:

• http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Technical_Notes/deployment.html
• http://www.codarama.com/drupal/?q=node/6
• https://launchpad.net/upstart
• http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/