How To Set Up a Node.js Application for Production on CentOS 7

Introduction

Node.js is an open source Javascript runtime environment for easily building server-side and networking applications. The platform runs on Linux, OS X, FreeBSD, and Windows, and its applications are written in JavaScript. Node.js applications can be run at the command line but we will teach you how to run them as a service, so they will automatically restart on reboot or failure, so you can use them in a production environment.

In this tutorial, we will cover setting up a production-ready Node.js environment that is composed of two CentOS 7 servers; one server will run Node.js applications managed by PM2, while the other will provide users with access to the application through an Nginx reverse proxy to the application server.

The Ubuntu version of this tutorial can be found here.

Prerequisites

This guide uses two CentOS 7 servers with private networking (in the same datacenter). Private networking can be configured on new servers when they are being created (in the Select additional options section). We will refer to them by the following names:

• app: The server where we will install Node.js runtime, your Node.js application, and PM2.
• web: The server where we will install the Nginx web server, which will act as a reverse proxy to your application. Users will access this server’s public IP address to get to your Node.js application.

Before you begin this guide, you should have a regular, non-root user with sudo privileges configured on both of your servers—this is the user that you should log in to your servers as. You can learn how to configure a regular user account by following our initial server setup guide for CentOS 7.

Commands executed on the app server:

an_example_command_on_app

Commands executed on the web server:

an_example_command_on_web

It is possible to use a single server for this tutorial, but you will have to make a few changes along the way. Simply use the localhost IP address, i.e. 127.0.0.1, wherever the app server’s private IP address is used.

Here is a diagram of what your setup will be after following this tutorial:

If you want to be able to access your web server via a domain name, instead of its public IP address, purchase a domain name then follow these tutorials:

• How To Set Up a Host Name with DigitalOcean
• How to Point to DigitalOcean Nameservers From Common Domain Registrars

Let’s get started by installing the Node.js runtime on the app server.

Step 1 — Installing Node.js

We will install the latest LTS release of Node.js, on the app server.

SSH to your app server using the regular, non-root user with sudo privileges.

On the app server, let’s use curl to download the NodeSource RPM Repository configuration file:

curl -L -o nodesource_setup.sh https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_10.x

CURL will use the HTTPS protocol to download the setup script to your server, with the output including information relevant to the download:

Output
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 11109  100 11109    0     0  70128      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 70757

Next, you should inspect the script’s contents. The following command will open the NodeSource setup script in your servers console, which you can then cross-reference with the NodeSource setup script (from the NodeSource Distributions Github repository) to confirm the script that downloaded properly:

vi nodesource_setup.sh

Once satisfied with the file, exit vi by typing :q to quit and return to the command line.

Now let’s run the setup script to install the NodeSource RPM Repository. This will enable us to access NodeSource’s repository from within the yum package manager:

sudo -E bash nodesource_setup.sh

The script outputs information on the setup for our reference:

Output
## Installing the NodeSource Node.js 10.x repo...

## Inspecting system...

+ rpm -q --whatprovides redhat-release || rpm -q --whatprovides centos-release || rpm -q --whatprovides cloudlinux-release || rpm -q --whatprovides sl-release
+ uname -m

## Confirming "el7-x86_64" is supported...

+ curl -sLf -o /dev/null 'https://rpm.nodesource.com/pub_10.x/el/7/x86_64/nodesource-release-el7-1.noarch.rpm'

## Downloading release setup RPM...

+ mktemp
+ curl -sL -o '/tmp/tmp.2aCcULVx8n' 'https://rpm.nodesource.com/pub_10.x/el/7/x86_64/nodesource-release-el7-1.noarch.rpm'

## Installing release setup RPM...

+ rpm -i --nosignature --force '/tmp/tmp.2aCcULVx8n'

## Cleaning up...

+ rm -f '/tmp/tmp.2aCcULVx8n'

## Checking for existing installations...

+ rpm -qa 'node|npm' | grep -v nodesource

## Run `sudo yum install -y nodejs` to install Node.js 10.x and npm.
## You may also need development tools to build native addons:
     sudo yum install gcc-c++ make
## To install the Yarn package manager, run:
     curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/rpm/yarn.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/yarn.repo
     sudo yum install yarn

Before installing Node.js it is important to clean all the cached information from yum. Clearing the cache will ensure that yum uses the network connection to get Node.js from our new NodeSource Repository (which will prevent any potential conflicts caused by outdated packages):

sudo yum clean all

Next we will download and make usable all the metadata for the currently enabled yum repos. This will ensure that our yum queries are completed as quickly as possible:

sudo yum makecache fast

To compile and install native add-ons from npm we also need to install build tools:

sudo yum install -y gcc-c++ make

Now we can install the latest release of the Node.js package:

sudo yum install -y nodejs

Verify that Node is installed by checking its version with this command:

node -v

Your output will show the version number you’re running:

Output
v10.16.3

The Node.js runtime is now installed, and ready to run an application. Let’s write a Node.js application.

Step 2 — Creating the Node.js Application

Now we will create a Hello World application that simply returns "Hello World" to any HTTP requests. This is a sample application that will help you get Node.js set up, which you can replace with your own application—just make sure that you modify your application to listen on the appropriate IP addresses and ports.

Because we want our Node.js application to serve requests that come from our reverse proxy server (web) we will use our app server’s private network interface for inter-server communication. Look up your app server’s private network address.

If you are using a DigitalOcean Droplet as your server, you may look up the server’s private IP address through the Metadata service. On the app server, use the curl command to retrieve the IP address now:

curl -sw "\n" http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1/interfaces/private/0/ipv4/address

You will want to copy the output (the private IP address), as it will be used to configure the Node.js application.

Next, create and open your Node.js application for editing. For this tutorial, we will use vi to edit a sample application called hello.js:

vi hello.js

Insert the following code into the file, and be sure to substitute the app server’s private IP address for both of the highlighted APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS items. If you want to, you may also replace the highlighted port, 8080, in both locations (be sure to use a non-admin port, i.e. 1024 or greater):

var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(8080, 'APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS');
console.log('Server running at http://APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS:8080/');

Now save and exit by pressing ESC to exit --INSERT-- mode, followed by :wq to write and quit in a single command.

This Node.js application simply listens on the specified IP address and port, and returns "Hello World" with a 200 HTTP success code. This means that the application is only reachable from servers on the same private network, such as our web server.

If you want to test if your application works, run this node command on the app server:

node hello.js

It will save a lot of Nginx debugging if we first test that our web server is able to communicate with the Node.js application on app.

In order to test the application, open another terminal session and connect to your web server. Because the web server is on the same private network, it should be able to reach the private IP address of the app server using curl. Be sure to substitute in the app server’s private IP address for APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS, and the port if you changed it:

curl http://APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS:8080

If you see the following output, the application is working properly and listening on the proper IP address and port:

Node Application Output
Hello World

If you do not see the proper output, make sure that your Node.js application is running, and configured to listen on the proper IP address and port.

On the app server, be sure to kill the application by pressing CTRL+C.

Step 3 — Installing and Using PM2

Now we will install PM2, which is a process manager for Node.js applications. PM2 provides an easy way to manage and daemonize applications (run them as a service).

We will use Node Packaged Modules (NPM), which is basically a package manager for Node modules that installs with Node.js, to install PM2 on our app server. Use this command to install PM2:

sudo npm install pm2@latest -g

We will cover a few basic uses of PM2.

The first thing you will want to do is use the pm2 start command to run your application, hello.js, in the background:

pm2 start hello.js

This also adds your application to PM2’s process list, which is outputted every time you start an application:

Output
┌──────────┬────┬──────┬───────┬────────┬─────────┬────────┬─────────────┬──────────┐
│ App name │ id │ mode │ pid   │ status │ restart │ uptime │ memory      │ watching │
├──────────┼────┼──────┼───────┼────────┼─────────┼────────┼─────────────┼──────────┤
│ hello    │ 0  │ fork │ 30099 │ online │ 0       │ 0s     │ 14.227 MB   │ disabled │
└──────────┴────┴──────┴───────┴────────┴─────────┴────────┴─────────────┴──────────┘

As you can see, PM2 automatically assigns an App name (based on the filename, without the .js extension) and a PM2 id. PM2 also maintains other information, such as the PID of the process, its current status, and memory usage.

Applications that are running under PM2 will be restarted automatically if the application crashes or is killed, but an additional step needs to be taken to get the application to launch on system startup (boot or reboot). Luckily, PM2 provides an easy way to do this, the startup subcommand.

The startup subcommand generates and configures a startup script to launch PM2 and its managed processes on server boots. You must also specify the init system you are running on, which is systemd, in our case:

sudo pm2 startup systemd

You will see output like the following, which indicates that the PM2 service has been installed:

Output
[PM2] Generating system init script in /etc/systemd/system/pm2.service
[PM2] Making script booting at startup...
[PM2] -systemd- Using the command:
      su root -c "pm2 dump && pm2 kill" && su root -c "systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable pm2 && systemctl start pm2"
[PM2] Dumping processes
[PM2] Stopping PM2...
[PM2] All processes have been stopped and deleted
[PM2] PM2 stopped
[PM2] Done.

To ensure PM2 knows which applications to start on boot, we need to save the current process list. To save the list:

pm2 save

You will see output like the following, which indicates that the PM2 process list has been saved:

Output
[PM2] Saving current process list...
[PM2] Successfully saved in /home/deployer/.pm2/dump.pm2

Now your PM2-managed applications should start automatically on boot.

PM2 provides many subcommands that allow you to manage or look up information about your applications. Note that running pm2 without any arguments will display a help page, including example usage, that covers PM2 usage in more detail than this section of the tutorial.

Stop an application with this command (specify the PM2 App name or id):

pm2 stop example

Restart an application with this command (specify the PM2 App name or id):

pm2 restart example

The list of applications currently managed by PM2 can also be looked up with the list subcommand:

pm2 list

More information about a specific application can be found by using the info subcommand (specify the PM2 App name or id):

pm2 info example

The PM2 process monitor can be pulled up with the monit subcommand. This displays the application status, CPU, and memory usage:

pm2 monit

Now that your Node.js application is running, and managed by PM2, let’s set up the reverse proxy.

Step 4 — Setting Up an Nginx Reverse Proxy Server

Now that your application is running, and listening on a private IP address, you need to set up a way for your users to access it. We will set up an Nginx web server as a reverse proxy for this purpose. This tutorial will set up an Nginx server from scratch. If you already have an Nginx server setup, you can just copy the location block into the server block of your choice (make sure the location does not conflict with any of your web server’s existing content).

On the web server, let’s install the epel-release package using yum:

sudo yum install epel-release

Then install Nginx:

sudo yum install nginx

Now open the Nginx configuration file for editing:

sudo vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

First, find the line where server_name is defined, within the default server block. It should look something like this:

server_name _;

Update the server name to substitute the underscore (_) with your own domain name for the server_name directive (or IP address if you don’t have a domain set up).

server_name your-domain;

Then, find the line where location / is defined (usually a few lines below the server_name), within the same default server block. It should look something like this:

        location / {
        }

Replace it with the following code block and be sure to substitute the app server private IP address for the APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS. Additionally, change the port (8080) if your application is set to listen on a different port:

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS:8080;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }

This configures the web server to respond to requests at its root. Assuming our server is available at your-domain, accessing http://your-domain/ via a web browser would send the request to the application server’s private IP address on port 8080, which would be received and replied to by the Node.js application.

You can add additional location blocks to the same server block to provide access to other applications on the same web server. For example, if you were also running another Node.js application on the app server on port 8081, you could add this location block to allow access to it via http://your-domain/app2:

    location /app2 {
        proxy_pass http://APP_PRIVATE_IP_ADDRESS:8081;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }

Once you are done editing the location block(s) for your application(s), save and exit by pressing ESC to exit --INSERT-- mode, followed by :wq to write and quit in a single command.

On the web server, restart Nginx:

sudo systemctl start nginx

Next we want to ensure that Nginx runs whenever the server restarts:

sudo systemctl enable nginx

The enable command should provide the following Output

Output
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/nginx.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service.

You can also confirm that Nginx is running and is enabled, by requesting its status from systemctl:

sudo systemctl status nginx

The status command will output configuration information for the Nginx service:

Output
● nginx.service - The nginx HTTP and reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2019-10-14 09:37:23 UTC; 3min 29s ago
 Main PID: 12818 (nginx)
   CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
           ├─12818 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx
           └─12819 nginx: worker process

Oct 14 09:37:23 centos-s-1vcpu-1gb-sgp1-01 systemd[1]: Starting The nginx HTTP and reverse proxy server...
Oct 14 09:37:23 centos-s-1vcpu-1gb-sgp1-01 nginx[12814]: nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
Oct 14 09:37:23 centos-s-1vcpu-1gb-sgp1-01 nginx[12814]: nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
Oct 14 09:37:23 centos-s-1vcpu-1gb-sgp1-01 systemd[1]: Failed to read PID from file /run/nginx.pid: Invalid argument
Oct 14 09:37:23 centos-s-1vcpu-1gb-sgp1-01 systemd[1]: Started The nginx HTTP and reverse proxy server.

Finally, provide Nginx with the ability to relay traffic through Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). SELinux provides a security layer that implements Mandatory Access Control (MAC) in the Linux Kernel. Each operating system object (process, file descriptor, file, etc.) is labeled with an SELinux context that defines the permissions and operations the object can perform.

Nginx is labelled with the httpd_t context and as a result, has a number of configurations blocked by SELinux unless explicitly allowed. To demonstrate this, run the following command to confirm the Nginx service is labelled httpd_t:

ps -eZ

This command provides process status information, search for the Nginx specific process information to see the label. You will see the httpd_t, in a similar manner to the following:

Output
...
system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0    10208 ?        00:00:00 nginx
system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0    10209 ?        00:00:00 nginx
...

Now let’s check the status of the default booleans related to the httpd_t SELinux label. We can show this information by running the following command:

getsebool -a

We are only interested in the httpd related booleans for this tutorial:

Output
...
httpd_anon_write --> off
httpd_builtin_scripting --> on
httpd_can_check_spam --> off
httpd_can_connect_ftp --> off
httpd_can_connect_ldap --> off
httpd_can_connect_mythtv --> off
httpd_can_connect_zabbix --> off
httpd_can_network_connect --> off
httpd_can_network_connect_cobbler --> off
httpd_can_network_connect_db --> off
httpd_can_network_memcache --> off
httpd_can_network_relay --> off
httpd_can_sendmail --> off
httpd_dbus_avahi --> off
httpd_dbus_sssd --> off
httpd_dontaudit_search_dirs --> off
httpd_enable_cgi --> on
httpd_enable_ftp_server --> off
httpd_enable_homedirs --> off
httpd_execmem --> off
httpd_graceful_shutdown --> on
httpd_manage_ipa --> off
httpd_mod_auth_ntlm_winbind --> off
httpd_mod_auth_pam --> off
httpd_read_user_content --> off
httpd_run_ipa --> off
httpd_run_preupgrade --> off
httpd_run_stickshift --> off
httpd_serve_cobbler_files --> off
httpd_setrlimit --> off
httpd_ssi_exec --> off
httpd_sys_script_anon_write --> off
httpd_tmp_exec --> off
httpd_tty_comm --> off
httpd_unified --> off
httpd_use_cifs --> off
httpd_use_fusefs --> off
httpd_use_gpg --> off
httpd_use_nfs --> off
httpd_use_openstack --> off
httpd_use_sasl --> off
httpd_verify_dns --> off
...

The two booleans of particular note, are httpd_can_network_connect and httpd_can_network_relay. The Redhat Documentation provides detail on each of the httpd booleans and their associated function (should you wish to find out more about each boolean), although following are the explanations of the two booleans that relate to this tutorial:

...
httpd_can_network_connect: When disabled, this Boolean prevents HTTP scripts and modules from initiating a connection to a network or remote port. Enable this Boolean to allow this access.
httpd_can_network_relay: Enable this Boolean when httpd is being used as a forward or reverse proxy.
...

Since our configuration is only relaying traffic, we just need to tell SELinux that the httpd server, in our case Nginx, can use the network to relay traffic in the reverse proxy configuration that we have set up. We will use the -P flag, to ensure that the changes are permanent (omitting this flag will result in httpd_can_network_relay reverting to its default state, off, upon restart of the server):

sudo setsebool -P httpd_can_network_relay on

Assuming that your Node.js application is running, and your application and Nginx configurations are correct, you should be able to access your application via the reverse proxy of the web server. Try it out by accessing your web server’s URL (its public IP address or domain name).

Conclusion

You now have your Node.js application running behind an Nginx reverse proxy. This reverse proxy setup is flexible enough to provide your users access to other applications or static web content that you want to share.

Also, if you are looking to encrypt transmissions between your web server and your users, here is a tutorial that will help you get HTTPS (TLS/SSL) support set up.

    server {
        listen       80 default_server;
        listen       [::]:80 default_server;
        server_name  _;
        root         /usr/share/nginx/html;

        # Load configuration files for the default server block.
        include /etc/nginx/default.d/*.conf;

        location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:9000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        }

        error_page 404 /404.html;
            location = /40x.html {
        }

        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
        }
    }

  server.listen(9000, _configEnvironment2['default'].ip, function () {
    console.log('Express server listening on %d, in %s mode', _configEnvironment2['default'].port, app.get('env'));
  });

user nginx;
.
.
.
.
server {
        listen       80 default_server;
        listen       [::]:80 default_server;
        server_name  droplet_public_ip_address;
        root         /usr/share/nginx/html;

        # Load configuration files for the default server block.
        include /etc/nginx/default.d/*.conf;

        location / {
            proxy_pass http://droplet_private_ip_address:3000;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
            proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        }

        error_page 404 /404.html;
            location = /40x.html {
        }

        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
        }
    }