Nodejs forever, run on boot with --watch not working

Question

I am new to linux and have just set up a server over at linode using ubuntu 12.04.

I have created a "myconfig.conf" file in /etc/init/ containing the following

start on startup
stop on shutdown
respawn

exec sudo -u myUser /usr/local/bin/forever start -w /home/myUser/myProject/server.js

When I reboot the linux server node has not been started (in some cases I can access the node server for 1 second before it dies). If I run this without the watch option ("-w") it works fine. I can also use the watch option when running manually without a problem, only happens when using the conf file. Is there some path I have to specify so that forever knows what files to watch?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I use forever-service and nodemon and then use the chkconfig utility to have it start on reboot.

For example:

This forever-service command does the following: everytime a json or raml file in the applications dist/assets folder is modified, wait 10 seconds and then restart the node app (server.js script):

$ forever-service install raml --script server.js -f " -c nodemon" -o " --delay 10 --watch dist/assets -e json,raml --exitcrash" -e "PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Then I can set the service to start on server reboot:

$ chkconfig --add raml
$ chkconfig raml on