Run node app on boot on a Rasberry Pi 4
January 11, 2022 - 2 min read 🍵Tags: productivity
This one is very similar to the Python one I wrote about but I had a bit of difficulty finding the right solution that worked for me. I just wanted to use the systemd thats built in and not have to download another node plugin or use cron job to make this work.
The reason why I wanted to do something like this is because my Apex Disord BOT, a program made to check the current map rotation at a glance on my Discord server would turn off if the Rasberry Pi had experienced a power outage and I had to turn it back on and run node bot.js
So, I wanted to automated this process using the same method as the Telegram Bot I used seen in the earlier link.
At first, I tried to specify the node ExecStart to be /usr/local/bin/node /home/pi/bot.js this did not work for me, so I added the WorkingDirectory to point exactly where my bot was and changed my ExecStart to simply be node bot.js
The final code that worked for me was:
[Unit]
Description=Apex Discord BOT
[Service]
User=pi
WorkingDirectory=/home/Github-Projects/ApexDiscordBOT
ExecStart=node bot.js
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Now I can run any persist any node application in case it ever goes down and will reboot automatically on my Rasberry Pi.
