Running a Node.js application using nvm as a systemd service

This article was originally published at https://gist.github.com/joepie91/73ce30dd258296bd24af23e9c5f761aa . 
 Hi there! Since this post was originally written,  nvm has gained some new tools, and some people have suggested alternative (and potentially better) approaches for modern systems. Make sure to have a look at the comments on the original Gist ,  before following this guide! 
 Trickier than it seems. 
 1. Set up nvm 
 Let's assume that you've already created an unprivileged user named myapp . You should never run your Node.js applications as root! 
 Switch to the myapp user, and do the following: 
 
 curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.31.0/install.sh | bash (however, this will immediately run the nvm installer - you probably want to just download the install.sh manually, and inspect it before running it) 
 Install the latest stable Node.js version: nvm install stable 
 
 2. Prepare your application 
 Your package.json must specify a start script, that describes what to execute for your application. For example: 
 ...
"scripts": {
 "start": "node app.js"
},
... 
 3. Service file 
 Save this as /etc/systemd/system/my-application.service : 
 [Unit]
Description=My Application

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/my-application
ExecStart=/home/myapp/start.sh
WorkingDirectory=/home/myapp/my-application-directory
LimitNOFILE=4096
IgnoreSIGPIPE=false
KillMode=process
User=myapp

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
 
 You'll want to change the User , Description and ExecStart / WorkingDirectory paths to reflect your application setup. 
 4. Startup script 
 Next, save this as /home/myapp/start.sh (adjusting the username in both the path and the script if necessary): 
 #!/bin/bash
. /home/myapp/.nvm/nvm.sh
npm start 
 This script is necessary, because we can't load nvm via the service file directly. 
 Make sure to make it executable: 
 chmod +x /home/myapp/start.sh 
 5. Enable and start your service 
 Replace my-application with whatever you've named your service file after, running the following as root : 
 
 systemctl enable my-application 
 systemctl start my-application 
 
 To verify whether your application started successfully (don't forget to npm install your dependencies!), run: 
 systemctl status my-application 
 ... which will show you the last few lines of its output, whether it's currently running, and any errors that might have occurred. 
 Done!