How do I start my node server when deploying to AWS via Bitbucket pipeline?

I'm using a Bitbucket pipeline to deploy my Node application to an EC2 instance running linux. I created a script to start my application:

# Source nvm and load Node.js environment for root user
export NVM_DIR="/home/ec2-user/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"

# Navigate to the API directory
cd /api

# Start the node server
npm start

I'm calling that script from my AppSpec.yml as follows:

hooks:
  AfterInstall:
      - location: deploy/nodestart.sh
        timeout: 30
        runas: root

The pipeline execution fails. Via the AWS Console I can see that the start of the application actually succeeded, but the start of the Node server is a blocking event. The script hangs and then it exceeds the timeout, is terminated and then the deployment fails.

How do I start Node asynchronously to the deployment so that the deployment terminates cleanly? Thanks for your advice!

Ultimately, I set this to run as a service, with a lcapi.service definition file inside of /etc/systemd/system.

I copy this in as part of the pipeline deployment. These commands enable the service, reload the new service definition for the OS, and then start the service.

systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/lcapi.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start lcapi.service

to see the status of your running service:

systemctl status lcapi.service

For more information on setting up linux services, see: https://natancabral.medium.com/run-node-js-service-with-systemd-on-linux-42cfdf0ad7b2