If you prefer the non-native approach and like to use Docker instead, you have to make sure that Docker is installed. For the purpose of this installation, we will assume that you are using Debian 11 (codename "bullseye"). The required steps should be similar on other Linux distributions.
On a Debian 11 system you can install Docker by typing the following commands:
# update of package lists
apt-get update
# install Docker package and dependencies without further confirmation
apt-get install -y docker.io
The standard configuration right after the installation of Docker only allows the root user to use Docker. Since it is more advisable to run Docker as a different user, you need to add this other user (here: user1) to the group docker. Type
gpasswd -a user1 docker
to add the user user1 to the docker group. Repeat for other users, if needed. Group membership will be applied after the next login of the user, so these users might need to log off and on again before they can continue.
Furthermore you should restart the Docker daemon:
systemctl restart docker
should trigger the restart.
After that the user user1 can type
docker info
into a terminal in order to check whether he/she can execute docker commands in his/her user context. If the command displays an error, then something is not quite right yet. (Forgot to log off and on again?)
The following commands have to be issued in the root directory of the checked out source code:
# create image - may take several minutes during the first run; runs after
# that are faster, because Docker caches some data
docker build -t exportapp .
# start container based on that image and pass port 3000 through
docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --net=host exportapp
After that the Node.js application can be accessed in a web browser via http://localhost:3000.