NodeJS

Warning
This is a work in progress!

About Installation

This guide will walk through installing Node.js behind nginx and using Monit to keep Node instances alive. Since Node.js is a single-process application, we will launch multiple instances of the application and load balance using nginx.

Installation

USE flags

USE flags for net-libs/nodejs A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine

+icu	Enable ICU (Internationalization Components for Unicode) support, using dev-libs/icu
+inspector	Enable V8 inspector
+snapshot	Enable snapshot creation for faster startup
+ssl	Add support for SSL/TLS connections (Secure Socket Layer / Transport Layer Security)
+system-icu	Use system dev-libs/icu instead of the bundled version
+system-ssl	Use system OpenSSL instead of the bundled one
corepack	Enable the experimental corepack package management tool
debug	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
doc	Add extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally
lto	Enable Link-Time Optimization (LTO) to optimize the build
npm	Enable NPM package manager
pax-kernel	Enable building under a PaX enabled kernel
systemtap	Enable SystemTap/DTrace tracing
test	Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2025-05-02 19:25 More information about USE flags

Emerge

root #emerge --ask monit nginx nodejs

npm

Node.js has a USE flag to include npm, the Node.js package manager. You will need it to install a Node.js application's dependencies, which are defined in a file named package.json.

The current stable version of Node.js, 6.11.x, comes with npm 3.10.x.

If you need a newer version like npm 5.6.x, use Node.js 8.9.x (the next LTS release) or later. You can configure which version to pull in by setting keywords, e.g.:

FILE /etc/portage/package.keywords/nodejs

~net-libs/nodejs-8.9.4

Also see Knowledge_Base:Accepting_a_keyword_for_a_single_package.

Configure Monit

FILE /etc/monit.d/my-appAuto restart NodeJS App

check process mysql with pidfile /var/run/my-app/mysqld.pid
    start program = "/bin/bash -c 'rc-service mysql start'"
    stop program  = "/bin/bash -c 'rc-service mysql stop'"

Configure Nginx

FILE /etc/nginx/nginx.confNginx Config

http {
    upstream myapp1 {
        least_conn;
        server srv1.example.com;
        server srv2.example.com;
        server srv3.example.com;
    }

    server {
        listen 80;

        location / {
            proxy_pass http://myapp1;
        }
    }
}