Running pm2 as a user other than root

[pavelfomin]

An initial attempt was made to generate the pm2-init.sh script with a user other than root:

USER=%USER%

export PATH=$PATH:%NODE_PATH%
export PM2_HOME="%HOME_PATH%"

super() {
    su - $USER -c "PATH=$PATH; $*"
}

The command pm2 startup -u node centos would generate the following file content:

USER=node

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/node/node-v0.10.26/bin
export PM2_HOME="/root"

lockfile="/var/lock/subsys/pm2-init.sh"

There are two problems with this approach. First, PM2_HOME still points to /root. Second, the lockfile points to the directory only root can write in.

Proposed changes

export PM2_HOME="$(eval echo ~$USER)"
lockfile="$PM2_HOME/.pm2/pm2.lock"

[grees]

👍

[JeromeGill]

As an aside, it is currently difficult to install pm2 without the --unsafe-perm flag. Some documentation on recommended permissions set-up would be really great.

[soyuka]

With the beta version (npm i pm2@rc) socket has been fixed an you can run 1 pm2 instance per user on a same server.
I'd advise using nvm to manage node versions and packages per user:

su - $user
nvm install 0.11.13
npm i pm2@rc -g
pm2 start server.js
#then as root
su -
nvm install 0.11.13
npm i pm2@rc -g --unsafe-perm
pm2 list #should be empty

[bluecurio]

👍 on documentation about permissions setup.