How to run a Node app on Synology?
How to run a Node app on Synology?
I've written a bot for !dailygames@lemmy.zip that I'm currently just running on my desktop. But I'd like to be able to set and forget it (except for when I do updates) by running it on my Synology NAS.
How can I best pull the node app from GitHub and run it on my Synology, preferably automatically running on start-up if the Synology is restarted.
Docker would be my go to
Why can't you run it on your desktop?
I can, but that would require manually starting it up every time I restart my computer—which is daily, for the most part. And there are times when I don't even turn on my computer for the day, or don't do so before the 2pm time the bot needs to run. It would be better to have it running on a system that's always online.
You could use task scheduler. However, that won't fix the uptime issue.
Why can't you run it on your desktop?
The easiest would be using docker, you can set up the container to always restart, that way it will be started automatically on NAS restart.
You can also download node.js from the Synology software center and manually add a cronjob to run after reboot, but the docker way is probably the best way to go.
I'd recommend to make a Dockerfile for it and run it that way. It'll be quite a lot easier than to manage installing a bunch of dependencies.
Here's a guide I found pretty good!
Here's a bit of a shorter one too to get some more reference.
If you can containerise it you could run it in docker.
Only some models of Synology units have the ability to run containers, so check that first.
Otherwise, you COULD try and install the deps from the Synocommunity packages, but they get messy pretty quickly due to architecture limitations per package (one package may only work on select models). You can browse those and their architecture targets on the synocommunity site to make sure what you need will be available. If you can't go the container route, I'd definitely read up on packaging your own app using the synocommunity guides, even if keeping it private.