One way of handling errors in your main hapi app.js file. These errors would normally cause the process to stop, but we should try and stop the server prior to killing the process. Hapi by default handles errors using domains, so uncaught exceptions won't cause the server to halt.

hapi-handle-errors.js

var domain = require("domain").create();

// ...

// surround the mongo connection in a domain, to handle errors
domain.run(function() {
    // connect to the database
    mongoose.connect("mongodb://" + mongoConnection, function(error) {
        // handle the error case
        if (error) {
            console.error("Failed to connect to the Mongo server!!");
            console.error(error);
            throw error;
        }
    });
});

// ...

// start the server
server.start(function() {
    console.log("Server started at: " + server.info.uri);
});


// logic to handle stopping the server
function killMe(error) {
    // if an error exists, log it
    if (error) {
        console.error(error.message);
    }

    if (server) {
        console.log("Stopping the server...");

        // try and stop the server
        server.stop(function() {
            console.log("Server stopped");
            process.exit();
        });

        // just in case that doesn't work, be ready to pull the plug...
        setTimeout(function() {
            console.log("Timed out waiting for the server to stop, killing process (sorry)");
            process.exit();
        }, 30 * 1000);
    } else {
        // no server, just kill the process
        process.exit();
    }
}

// handle errors and kill requests appropriately
domain.on("error", killMe);
process.on("SIGTERM", killMe);