an unfinished attempt at creating a Node.js init script - in the end I went with https://github.com/indexzero/forever

start_node.sh

#!/bin/bash

if [ -f node.pid ] ; then
  rm node.pid
fi

node node_script.js &
PID=$!

sleep 1

check=`ps ax | grep node | grep -v grep | grep $PID | wc -l`


if [ $check -eq 1 ] ; then
  echo $PID > node.pid
  echo "Node has started"
  exit 0
else
  echo "Node could not be started"
  exit 1
fi