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I am trying to get an init script running that starts nodejs as a daemon. The problem is, that when I executing start-stop-daemon it always returns '0', regardless of what error the nodejs-daemon may return.

I got as far as figuring out that the issue arises when using start-stop-daemon with the --background switch.

With the switch, start-stop-daemon always returns '0', even when the nodejs-daemon fails.

root# start-stop-daemon --start --chuid $GHOST_USER:$GHOST_GROUP --chdir $GHOST_ROOT --make-pidfile --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON  --background -- $DAEMON_ARGS ; echo ---error: $?

---error: 0

Note, that the daemon silently failed and is NOT running at this moment!

Without the switch, we can actually see the daemon failing to start.

root# start-stop-daemon --start --chuid $GHOST_USER:$GHOST_GROUP --chdir $GHOST_ROOT --make-pidfile --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON  -- $DAEMON_ARGS ; echo ---error: $?

ERROR: Unsupported version of Node

Ghost needs Node version ~0.10.0 || ~0.12.0 || ^4.2.0 you are using version 5.10.0



Please see http://support.ghost.org/supported-node-versions/ for more information

---error: 231

Now I am looking to find a solution so I can use the --background switch and having a error code bigger than '0' when it fails to start the nodejs daemon.

This is documented behavior. The foreground process completes after forking the background process. From the man page:

-b, --background

          Typically used with programs that don't detach on their own. This option will force start-stop-daemon to fork before starting the process, and  force

          it  into  the  background.   Warning:  start-stop-daemon  cannot check the exit status if the process fails to execute for any reason. This is a last

          resort, and is only meant for programs that either make no sense forking on their own, or where it's not feasible to add the code for them to do this

          themselves.

we found that after a file system issue some of the mongo files ended up being owned by root. For this particular issue it was the journal files. Change all of these back to mongodb:mongodb with chown mongodb:mongodb * in the db/journal directory. Also important to delete the mongod.lock file in the db directory. What was also a little wierd was that removing the --background option in the start_stop_deamon worked but of course you want it to run in the background