How to run ghost in the background


For running ghost blog in the background manually, execute the following within your blog directory.

cd /path/to/your/install/  
nohup npm start </dev/null 1>/path/to/your/install/logs/stdout.log
2>/path/to/your/install/logs/stderr.log &  

I perfer to run ghost in the background by using Supervisor.

First install supervisor

apt-get install supervisor  

Make sure it's running

sudo service supervisor start  

Create the config file

vim /etc/supervisor/conf.d/ghost.conf  
\[program:ghost\]  
command = node /path/to/ghost/index.js  
directory = /path/to/ghost  
user = ghost  
autostart = true  
autorestart = true  
stdout\_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/ghost.log  
stderr\_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/ghost\_err.log  
environment = NODE\_ENV="production"  

Start Ghost

supervisorctl start ghost  

*EDIT*

I've switched to use the npm package Forever.

To install forever type
:::npm install forever -g
To start Ghost using forever from the Ghost installation directory type
:::NODE_ENV=production forever start index.js
To stop Ghost type
:::forever stop index.js
To check if Ghost is currently running type
:::forever list

Sources:
Supervisor information from ghost documentation