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“Forever” means recovering automatically from ordinary process crashes and VPS reboots. It does not mean the provider, network, database, third-party services, disk, or application code can never fail. The procedures below are designed to make those failures visible and recoverable rather than leaving a game API, leaderboard service, or web app tied to an open terminal.
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An SSH session is only a way to administer a server. If your app is attached to that shell, closing the terminal can send it a hangup signal or terminate the session’s process group. Tools such as nohup may detach a process temporarily, but they do not provide a durable boot configuration, crash recovery, health reporting, or an operator-friendly log workflow.
A production app needs four separate guarantees:
- Session independence: the app is owned by a supervisor, not by your interactive shell.
- Crash recovery: the supervisor starts a replacement process when the app exits unexpectedly.
- Boot persistence: the supervisor itself starts after a VPS reboot and knows which app to launch.
- Operational visibility: you can see startup errors, restart loops, dependency failures, and real request health.
A running process is not proof that users can play, sign in, submit a score, or fetch a match. A process can remain alive while initialization failed, a database connection is broken, or every request returns an error. Pair supervision with logs and a health check.
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Choose one restart authority
First decide where the workload runs. Do not have two independent systems attempting to restart the same process. Docker’s documentation specifically warns against combining Docker restart policies with host-level process managers because the two authorities can conflict.
| Approach | Best fit | Recovery and boot behavior | Observability | Main caution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PM2 on the VPS host | Node.js, Python, shell, Ruby, PHP, or binary apps running directly on the host | Automatic restarts; a generated startup hook; pm2 save persists the process list |
pm2 logs, pm2 monit, status/list commands, and an optional dashboard |
Use sensible delays or backoff and implement graceful shutdown |
| Docker restart policy | Apps already packaged as containers | Docker restarts containers according to the selected policy; the Docker service must start at boot | Container logs plus an application-level health check | Do not add a competing host-level manager for the same container |
| systemd or Supervisor | Host-managed services where OS-native supervision is preferred | The selected service manager owns startup and restart behavior | Depends on the manager and the VPS logging setup | Document exactly which service owns restarts |
For a small game backend installed directly on a VPS, PM2 keeps the setup approachable. For a reproducible image-based deployment, Docker’s policy should remain the authority. systemd or Supervisor can be appropriate when your team already standardizes on them, but adding them on top of PM2 or Docker creates ambiguous ownership.
Prepare the app before enabling automatic recovery
Give the process a deterministic start command
Write down the command that starts the app from a clean login: its working directory, runtime version, environment variables, port, and configuration files. A supervisor can restart only what it can start reliably. Test the command manually from the intended deployment directory before handing it to PM2 or Docker.
Separate secrets from the process definition
Keep database credentials, signing keys, and service tokens in the VPS environment or your deployment secret mechanism. Saving a PM2 process list or a container configuration should not turn credentials into source-controlled text. Confirm that the supervised process receives the same variables after a reboot.
Decide what “healthy” means
Define an endpoint or equivalent check that represents a usable service. For a game API, that might verify that the HTTP server is accepting requests and that required database or queue dependencies are reachable. A check that only returns “the process exists” will miss failed initialization and dependency outages.
Run a host-installed app with PM2
PM2 is a process manager commonly used for Node.js and can also supervise Python, shell, Ruby, PHP, and binary workloads. Its documented workflow is to start a named process, generate a startup hook, save the process list, then use its logs and monitoring commands during operation.
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1. Start the app with a stable name
From the application directory, start the real entry point and assign a name that will still make sense months later:
cd /srv/arena-api
pm2 start app.js --name arena-apiReplace app.js with your entry point. If the app is a script or binary, use the corresponding executable and arguments. The name is how you will target logs, restarts, and status checks, so avoid generic names such as node or test.
Confirm that PM2 sees the process:
pm2 list
pm2 statusBefore proceeding, make a real request to the service and inspect its output. A process that immediately exits or repeatedly restarts should be fixed before boot persistence is configured.
2. Generate the boot integration
Run:
pm2 startupPM2 detects the VPS init system and prints a command tailored to that host. Copy and run the generated command exactly as displayed, with the privileges it requests. The generated hook is what starts PM2 when the machine boots; merely installing PM2 or starting an app once does not provide that guarantee.
3. Save the process list
After the app is running correctly, freeze the desired list:
pm2 saveThe saved list is the boot-time definition PM2 restores. Run pm2 save again whenever you intentionally add, remove, rename, or reconfigure a managed app. Otherwise a reboot can restore an older list or no app at all.
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4. Verify logs and live metrics
Use the built-in views while the app is under load:
pm2 logs arena-api
pm2 monitpm2 logs helps identify failed imports, missing environment variables, port conflicts, and database errors. pm2 monit provides a live operational view. Retain logs and rotate them before they consume the VPS disk; a full disk can prevent both the app and its supervisor from working.
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5. Configure restart timing
Immediate restarts are useful for a transient crash but harmful when a dependency is down. A database outage can otherwise create a tight loop that repeatedly starts, fails, and consumes CPU and log space. PM2 documents fixed restart delays and exponential backoff. Backoff increases the wait between failures and resets after the process has run stably, reducing pressure during an extended dependency outage.
Choose a delay that matches the dependency and alerting policy. The goal is not to hide failures; it is to give an unavailable service time to recover while preserving clear logs and a health signal.
Run a container with Docker’s restart policy
If the app is already packaged as a container, let Docker own its restart behavior. Do not run PM2 on the VPS to restart the container and also configure Docker to restart it. Pick one authority and make the container itself responsible for the application process inside it.
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1. Build and start the container
Build the image using your normal deployment process, then start it with a restart policy. For example:
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docker build -t arena-api:current .
docker run -d
--name arena-api
--restart unless-stopped
-p 8080:8080
arena-api:currentThe exact image name, port, volumes, and environment settings depend on your app. The important property is that Docker, not an SSH shell or a second supervisor, owns the container lifecycle. If you use Compose, express the equivalent restart policy in the service definition and deploy that definition consistently.
2. Ensure Docker starts at boot
A container policy matters only while the Docker service is running. Enable the Docker service using the VPS distribution’s service-management procedure, then verify after a controlled reboot that Docker starts and restores the container. The app’s startup command, mounted data, and environment variables must all be available at that time.
3. Inspect container state and output
docker ps
docker inspect arena-api
docker logs --tail 200 arena-apiContainer status tells you whether Docker considers the container running; logs explain why the application may still be unusable. Add an application-level health check that exercises the dependencies important to players and operators. PM2’s container documentation also describes exposing a web health endpoint when pm2-runtime is used inside a container, but the restart authority should remain clear.
Make shutdowns graceful
Automatic replacement is not enough during deployments or planned restarts. A hard kill can discard in-flight requests, truncate writes, or leave queue messages in an uncertain state. PM2 describes graceful shutdown as five stages:
- Receive the shutdown notification.
- Stop accepting new work and drain traffic.
- Finish requests already in flight.
- Release database, queue, socket, and other resources.
- Exit so the supervisor can restart or replace the process.
Implement handlers for the termination signals your runtime receives, including SIGTERM and SIGINT. Set a bounded drain period so a stuck request cannot block deployment forever. Test the handler with a maintenance restart and confirm that clients receive a deliberate response rather than a dropped connection.
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Process status is only one signal
A supervisor can report “online” while the app cannot reach its database, has loaded the wrong configuration, or returns errors for every request. A health endpoint should distinguish basic liveness from readiness when your architecture needs that distinction. Liveness answers whether the process can respond; readiness answers whether it should receive user traffic.
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Make logs useful under pressure
- Include timestamps and a request or session identifier where appropriate.
- Record startup configuration failures explicitly without printing secrets.
- Log dependency connection failures with retry timing and the eventual recovery.
- Rotate retained logs before disk exhaustion.
- Keep supervisor and application logs available after a reboot so the first failure is not lost.
Alert on behavior, not only restarts
Repeated restarts, failed health checks, rising response errors, and a filling disk each represent different failure modes. A process that never crashes but serves errors will not trigger a restart alert, so monitor the endpoint that users actually need.
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Perform these checks during a maintenance window and record the expected result for your team:
- Close SSH and confirm that the app still serves a real request.
- Restart the supervisor or container and verify graceful draining, a clean start, and a healthy endpoint.
- Stop the app process or container deliberately and confirm that the selected authority recreates it.
- Reboot the VPS and verify that the supervisor, process definition, ports, environment, and dependencies return in the correct order.
- Inspect logs for the stop, restart, and health transition.
- Restore normal traffic only after the health check is healthy.
These are operator procedures, not a promise that every VPS or application will recover identically. Provider-level outages, unreachable networks, corrupted disks, expired credentials, and broken releases require a separate incident or rollback plan.
Troubleshoot the failures people commonly mistake for “random downtime”
| Symptom | Likely cause | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| The app stops when SSH closes | It is still attached to the shell | Move ownership to PM2, Docker, systemd, or Supervisor; do not rely on an interactive session |
| It works until the VPS reboots | Boot integration or the saved definition is missing | For PM2, rerun pm2 startup and pm2 save; for Docker, verify the daemon starts and the restart policy is present |
| The process is “online” but requests fail | Initialization or a dependency is unhealthy | Read application logs and test the real health endpoint, database, queue, and external services |
| CPU and logs spike after an outage | A tight crash loop | Add a fixed delay or exponential backoff and fix the unavailable dependency |
| Deployments drop active players | Immediate termination | Implement signal handling, drain traffic, finish in-flight work, release resources, and then exit |
| Two systems keep restarting the same workload | Competing restart authorities | Remove either the host-level manager or the Docker restart policy and document the remaining owner |
| Restarts eventually fail because the VPS is full | Unrotated logs or growing application data | Inspect disk usage, configure rotation, and retain only the logs needed for operations and incident review |
A practical operating policy for a VPS game service
For a host-installed service, make PM2 the documented owner: one named process, one saved process list, one generated boot hook, and one team runbook for logs, backoff, graceful shutdown, and health checks. For a containerized service, make Docker the owner: one image definition, one restart policy, one boot-enabled Docker service, and one health endpoint. In either case, write down the start command, required environment, listening port, data locations, dependency order, rollback procedure, and the person or alert responsible for intervention.
This arrangement gives you automatic recovery from normal crashes and reboots without pretending that software can run literally forever. Reliability comes from making every recovery path explicit, testing it deliberately, and treating health, logs, and dependency state as part of the application rather than as optional extras.
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