I'd like to have an init.d daemon restart my node.js app if it crashes. This script starts/stops my node app. I've had no luck getting it to restart the app if it crashes.

I'm running under CentOS. What am I missing?

#!/bin/sh
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

USER="rmlxadmin"
DAEMON="/usr/bin/nodejs"
ROOT_DIR="/home/rmlxadmin"

SERVER="$ROOT_DIR/my_node_app.js"
LOG_FILE="$ROOT_DIR/app.js.log"

LOCK_FILE="/var/lock/subsys/node-server"

do_start()
{
        if [ ! -f "$LOCK_FILE" ] ; then
                echo -n $"Starting $SERVER: "
                runuser -l "$USER" -c "$DAEMON $SERVER >> $LOG_FILE &" && echo_success || echo_failure
                RETVAL=$?
                echo
                [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch $LOCK_FILE
        else
                echo "$SERVER is locked."
                RETVAL=1
        fi
}
do_stop()
{
        echo -n $"Stopping $SERVER: "
        pid=`ps -aefw | grep "$DAEMON $SERVER" | grep -v " grep " | awk '{print $2}'`
        kill -9 $pid > /dev/null 2>&1 && echo_success || echo_failure
        RETVAL=$?
        echo
        [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f $LOCK_FILE
}

case "$1" in
        start)
                do_start
                ;;
        stop)
                do_stop
                ;;
        restart)
                do_stop
                do_start
                ;;
        *)
                echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
                RETVAL=1
esac
exit $RETVAL

You need to use additional tools like node-supervisor for this case.

1. Install node-supervisor with npm:

   sudo npm install -g supervisor

2. Change DAEMON variable in your init.d script to node-supervisor executable: /usr/bin/supervisor. You can check this path using command 'whereis supervisor' in your system (after installation, of course).

Now supervisor will restart your application if it's crash.