Question

Why is this simple upstart failing?

I have a number of these simple upstart scripts that work fine on other droplets. This is a new droplet and /var/log/upstart/acc.log is filled with /proc/self/fd/9: 4: /proc/self/fd/9:  : not found

I can run the script ‘by hand’ and my app comes up just fine. The script is just

start on startup
respawn
script
    cd /opt/acc
    export PORT=4321
    export ROOT_URL='the ip here'
    node main.js
end script

I’ve tried adding export PATH and NODE_PATH … same error in the log.

This is a new droplet, but as I said I can run this ‘by hand’ and its fine.

Ideas as to what is wrong or what I can do to find out what is really ‘not found’?

P:)

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Jesin A • August 5, 2015

Upstart uses /bin/sh while running ‘by hand’ will use bash.

Try this:

start on startup
respawn
script
/bin/bash <<EOT
    cd /opt/acc
    export PORT=4321
    export ROOT_URL='the ip here'
    node main.js
EOT
end script

Source: http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#changing-the-default-shell

paulstocksacc • August 5, 2015

thanks for the response. The problem here is/was multiple version of node as well as multiple names ‘node’ vs ‘nodejs’. Ubuntu is a mess. upstart couldn’t find the node app. After many hours of trashing around with apt-get --purge remove node and installs. I finally got the single version of node required for this project (Meteor).