Joyent offers Node.js™ Cloud Services including a Node.js Development SmartMachine. The free Node.js Development SmartMachines are located under the no.de domain.

In this page:

This documentation is for the free Node Development SmartMachines that have a domain name that end in no.de If you are using a paid Node.js SmartMachine you have a static IP and your SSH server is on the default port

Creating a Node.js Development SmartMachine

First, you need an account on Joyent Cloud. Got to http://no.de/ and sign up. To provision a Node.js Development SmartMachine, you will need an SSH key.

You must compile all Node.js modules you build on a Node.js SmartMachine.

Finding your SSH key

Your SSH key can be found at ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub. If neither of those files exist, create them with

Once you've provisioned a machine, the service will provide information on how to update and connect to your newly provisioned Node.js Development SmartMachine. Be aware that the subdomain will take several minutes to propagate to your nameservers.

Updating ~/.ssh/config File

New Node.js Development SmartMachines use proxied HTTP which means that your machine does not have a unique IP address. That means that to access your Node.js Development SmartMachine with SSH, you will need to provide your machine's unique port number.

You can find the port number in the machine details page, along with instructions on how to update your SSH config file. They look something like this:

Host example.no.de
  Port 23456
  User node
  ForwardAgent yes

Deploying with git

Use git to deploy a Node.js application to your Node.js Development SmartMachine. For this to work, a file named server.js or a package.json file with a start script, must exist in the root of the repository. Here is a simple example of a possible server.js:

To initialize the git repository:

And to push to Joyent:

Each time git push is called the Node.js process on the server will be restarted. If the process exits in error, then the SmartMachine will rollback the Node.js process to the last working deployment.

A successful deployment looks like this:

To clone your Node.js Development SmartMachine repository into a different local machine, put the appropriate config settings in {{~/.ssh/config} and then use this command:

npm Dependencies and Integration

This only applies to the newest version of the no.de service. If you have an older version, you'll need to provision a new machine to take advantage of npm integration.

If you put a package.json file in the root of your git repository, then you can supply a list of dependencies, as well as a custom start command.

You can use the npm init command to initialize a package.json file, and then (using npm 1.0) install packages locally using npm install express --save to save the dependency to your package.json file.

By default the service gets started by running node server.js if a server.js file is found. However, if you would like to use a different start command, such as coffee-script server.coffee or node app.js --some args, then you can add this to your package.json file:

Make sure to git add your package.json file before pushing!

Configuration

By default the latest stable version, which at the moment is v0.4.11, is used. However, if a specific version of Node.js is needed, add a file to your git repository called config.json. The file should contain a single line

Note that this file is interpreted strictly as JSON, so the double quotes around the keys are required. At the moment "version" is the only setting in config.json but more may be added later.

You can specify a particular version

or choose a named version

or choose a version family to get the latest in that branch:

You can learn more about the available versions of Node.js and how to select a version here.

SSH access

You can use SSH to log in to your machine as the node user. For version 2 machines, you will need to provide your machine's port number.

If you update your ~/.ssh/config file as instructed in your machine's detail page in the no.de portal, you will be able to use SSH to log in like this:

Otherwise, you will need to use the -p switch to specify the port:

If you need to use sudo, you can log in as the admin user. This user has access to sudo without a password. See this topic.

The Node.js Development SmartMachine runs a purpose-built operating system that we call SmartOS. Yes, we're building an OS just to run your Node.js apps great! There is a lot to explore in the shell, but here are a few useful commands to get started:

If you are an Ubuntu or Cygwin user and your SSH is slow to log in read this.

Installing npm

npm is already installed. To make sure you have the latest version, do:

See Updating npm From Very Old Versions if you have trouble updating npm.