PM2 start script with multiple arguments (serve)

Question

I'm trying to run serve frontend/dist -l 4000 from PM2. This is supposed to serve a Vue app on port 4000.

In my ecosystem.config.js, I have:

    {
      name: 'parker-frontend',
      max_restarts: 5,
      script: 'serve',
      args: 'frontend/dist -l 4000',
      instances: 1,
    },

But when I do pm2 start, in the logs I have the following message:

Exposing /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/parker/frontend/dist directory on port NaN

Whereas if I run the same command: serve frontend/dist -l 4000, it runs just fine on port 4000.

walnut_salami walnut_salami · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-14T07:54:53

After running serve frontend/dist -l 5000 I got an error in the PM2 logs.

In it's call stack I've found:

at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/node_modules/pm2/lib/API/Serve.js:242:4)

Notice the path: /usr/lib/node_modules/pm2/lib/API/Serve.js

There is another command that's called serve in pm2 itself that was ran instead of the correct one. This is not the npm i -g serve I installed before. This is due to how Node package resolution works - it prioritizes local modules first.

To use the globally installed version (the correct one), you need to specify the exact path to your global serve.

To find out the path - on Linux, you can just do:

$ which serve
/usr/local/bin/serve

Then put the path in your ecosystem.config.js script property.

Final working ecosystem.config.js:

    {
      name: 'parker-frontend',
      script: '/usr/local/bin/serve', //pm2 has it's own 'serve' which doesn't work, make sure to use global
      args: 'frontend/dist -l 5000',
      instances: 1,
    },
    ```

PM2 start script with multiple arguments (serve)

1 Answers