Octofarm: Recommended Automatic start of npm (under linux)?

a lot use an npm package called pm2.

You can install with npm install pm2 -g

Then run the following.

pm2 startup

Copy and paste the output pm2 gives you after that last one.

pm2 start app.js --name OctoFarm

pm2 save

https://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/startup/

There's more information about it here for you, let me know if you get stuck.

1.1.5 is coming with pm2 as a dependency and it runs using that, I will hopefully be able to enable the startup commands at boot so it's all automatic but I've not looked much into it yet.

I was using a systemd service file with success using Ubuntu. As James states, the newer version is coming with pm2. With pm2, you can run pm2 startup and it will detect your init system and output a command to run to generate the startup files. I just did it and it seems to work pretty good.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I'd never even heard of pm2 before today so I had to do a little research and this is what I found and what I did and it appears to work.

Here's what happens when I run pm2 startup

ubuntu@octofarm:~$ OctoFarm/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup
[PM2] Init System found: systemd
ubuntu
[PM2] To setup the Startup Script, copy/paste the following command:
sudo env PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin /home/ubuntu/OctoFarm/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup systemd -u ubuntu --hp /home/ubuntu

And then after I run the command it told me:

ubuntu@octofarm:~$ sudo env PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin /home/ubuntu/OctoFarm/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup systemd -u ubuntu --hp /home/ubuntu
[PM2] Init System found: systemd
Platform systemd
Template
[Unit]
Description=PM2 process manager
Documentation=https://pm2.keymetrics.io/
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
User=ubuntu
LimitNOFILE=infinity
LimitNPROC=infinity
LimitCORE=infinity
Environment=PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
Environment=PM2_HOME=/home/ubuntu/.pm2
PIDFile=/home/ubuntu/.pm2/pm2.pid
Restart=on-failure

ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/OctoFarm/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 resurrect
ExecReload=/home/ubuntu/OctoFarm/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 reload all
ExecStop=/home/ubuntu/OctoFarm/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 kill

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Target path
/etc/systemd/system/pm2-ubuntu.service
Command list
[ 'systemctl enable pm2-ubuntu' ]
[PM2] Writing init configuration in /etc/systemd/system/pm2-ubuntu.service
[PM2] Making script booting at startup...
[PM2] [-] Executing: systemctl enable pm2-ubuntu...
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/pm2-ubuntu.service → /etc/systemd/system/pm2-ubuntu.service.
[PM2] [v] Command successfully executed.
+---------------------------------------+
[PM2] Freeze a process list on reboot via:
$ pm2 save

[PM2] Remove init script via:
$ pm2 unstartup systemd

Thanks for the quick response to both of you. Will try this later today. I love/hate Linux systems - about 10 different ways to do everything. I started with BSD Unix back in the late 1980s.

No trouble, I'll leave this open for now to remind me to add some notes to the README/Wiki

Installation documnets added for doing this cross platform