无法在端口80或443上运行node.js Web服务

Question

I have a VPS running CENTOS and I'm experimenting with Node.js. I ran an example node.js server running correctly on various ports, but whenever I tried to run node on port 80 (same error for 443) I get the following error:

root@mic [~/Projects/NodeTutorial2]# node index.js
Server running on port 80.

events.js:72
        throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
              ^
Error: listen EADDRINUSE
    at errnoException (net.js:883:11)
    at Server._listen2 (net.js:1021:14)
    at listen (net.js:1043:10)
    at Server.listen (net.js:1109:5)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/root/Projects/NodeTutorial2/index.js:8:4)
    at Module._compile (module.js:456:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:497:10)

I've tried to redirect port 80 to 3000 by doing:

sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3000

Apparently I executed this command twice because: when I did a: sudo iptables -t nat -L, it returned:

root@mic [~]# sudo iptables -t nat -L
Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
REDIRECT   tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere            tcp dpt:http redir ports 3000
REDIRECT   tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere            tcp dpt:http redir ports 3000

Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

but to no avail, I still get the same error.

I tried to see what is running on port 80 with the netstat -tulpn | grep:80 command and it returns:

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80                  0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      477/httpd
tcp        0      0 :::80                       :::*                        LISTEN      477/httpd

So I had killed the process running on port 80 and I got kicked off my VPS immediately.

What ports should I be running my node.js webservice?

According to my putty settings the port I'm accessing is port 22, so I don't understand what is going on there. Additionally, I'm not planning to run my webservice as root. I've created another user with less permissions that will run the node.js webservice.

Answer 1

1. Setup nodejs to use port 8000
2. install nginx and set it up as a reverse proxy for your nodejs app.

Don't use Apache, it creates a thread/process for every request, while nginx doesn't. It works similar to nodejs event loop where you have a queue of request that need to be processed and nginx worker processes take each request from the queue and process it - in your case send a request to nodejs server and then wait for the response.

And never use nodejs on port 80, there are just too many use-cases to handle and there is no need to reinvent the wheel