How can I run grunt as a daemon?

Question

I am running a packaged nodejs webserver that allows for reading of epub files (Readium-JS), and it is started with the grunt command.

However, if I run this on my VPS the server dies as soon as my terminal connection ends.

How can I run this task as a daemon?

I have looked at options like grunt-forever and grunt-daemon but the way the Gruntfile is written using load-grunt-config is messing with my mind and I can't piece together how to isolate the server code.

Answer 1

Here's the solution I found:

As was suggested above, using pm2

However, when I ran

pm2 start grunt 

I got an error saying that the grunt module did not exist, which was weird.

So I ended up writing a script which worked:

-- start.js --

var pm2 = require('pm2');

pm2.connect(function() {
  pm2.start({
    script    : '/usr/local/bin/grunt',         // Script to be run
    args: '--force',
  }, function(err, apps) {
    pm2.disconnect();
  });
});

After running node start.js from the command line, everything sailed smoothly.