How to run Node.js as a background process and never die?

nohup node server.js > /dev/null 2>&1 &

1. nohup means: Do not terminate this process even when the stty is cut off.
2. > /dev/null means: stdout goes to /dev/null (which is a dummy device that does not record any output).
3. 2>&1 means: stderr also goes to the stdout (which is already redirected to /dev/null). You may replace &1 with a file path to keep a log of errors, e.g.: 2>/tmp/myLog
4. & at the end means: run this command as a background task.

Simple solution (if you are not interested in coming back to the process, just want it to keep running):

nohup node server.js &

There's also the jobs command to see an indexed list of those backgrounded processes. And you can kill a backgrounded process by running kill %1 or kill %2 with the number being the index of the process.

Powerful solution (allows you to reconnect to the process if it is interactive):

screen

You can then detach by pressing Ctrl+a+d and then attach back by running screen -r

Also consider the newer alternative to screen, tmux.

You really should try to use screen. It is a bit more complicated than just doing nohup long_running &, but understanding screen once you never come back again.

Start your screen session at first:

user@host:~$ screen

Run anything you want:

wget http://mirror.yandex.ru/centos/4.6/isos/i386/CentOS-4.6-i386-binDVD.iso

Press ctrl+A and then d. Done. Your session keeps going on in background.

You can list all sessions by screen -ls, and attach to some by screen -r 20673.pts-0.srv command, where 0673.pts-0.srv is an entry list.