auto start nodejs app

Solution 1:

An alternative solution would be to use pm2.

Quoting from its README

PM2 is a production process manager for Node.js applications with a built-in load balancer. It allows you to keep applications alive forever, to reload them without downtime and to facilitate common system admin tasks

Basically it starts and manages the node process, at boot time or when the node process/app exists/breaks

# Installing pm2    
npm install -g pm2 # may require sudo

# Starting the app
pm2 start ~/Projects/red.js
pm2 save    # saves the running processes
            # if not saved, pm2 will forget
            # the running apps on next boot


# check status 
pm2 list

# IMPORTANT: If you want pm2 to start on system boot
pm2 startup # starts pm2 on computer boot

As for having an outdated node version, many guides exist such as this one