Golang : How to run Golang application such as web server in the background or as daemon?

Problem :

You have completed your Golang program and want to run it as a background process or daemon. For example, you want your Web server to run as a service.

Solutions :

Depending on the operating system your program is sitting on, these are some of the most common examples :

CentOS/Ubuntu or Linux/Unix in general :

 >nohup ./myexecutable &

or

 >nohup ./myexecutable & disown

The nohup command tells the shell to ignore the HANGUP signal and the & command tells the shell to run the program in the background. To bring the program back to the foreground, issue this command :

 >fg %1

and you can press Control-Z to kill it.

In the event you want to kill the process from command line, you can find out the PID(process ID) with

 >ps -ef | grep <your program name>

For example :

 >ping www.yahoo.com &
 >ps -ef | grep yahoo
 > 501 903 1 0  6:10PM ?? 0:00.01 ping www.yahoo.com 

then you can issue the command to kill process ID 903

 >kill 903

Windows :

Register your Golang program with NSSM (the Non-Sucking Service Manager). For example :

 nssm install YourProgram c:\YourProgram.exe

and to delete your program from the Windows service register, use the native service control :

 sc delete YourProgram

NOTE : Your Golang program can write to Windows Event Log with this package http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/winsvc

You might want to explore how to create daemonize Golang program easily with this tutorial :

https://www.socketloop.com/tutorials/golang-terminate-stay-resident-or-daemonize-your-program