Installation and configuration of PM2

PM2 is a process manager which keeps your application running as a daemon. It can be used to run Node.js applications like PWA apps or even internal services to support your eCommerce application. In this article we’ll cover the installation and configuration process of PM2.

We will run PM2 in combination with a program called supervisord to make sure that PM2 keeps running even when you upgrade/downgrade your Hypernode.

Installing PM2

PM2 can be installed in various ways. In this article we’ll install the process manager globally for the app user. We’ll be running PM2 daemonless by using pm2-runtime instead of pm2. We don’t want that to happen, because we want PM2 to be managed by supervisord.

app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Set NPM prefix to ~/.npm
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ npm config set prefix ~/.npm
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Install PM2 in NPM prefix
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ npm install --quiet -g pm2
/data/web/.npm/bin/pm2-dev -> /data/web/.npm/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2-dev
/data/web/.npm/bin/pm2 -> /data/web/.npm/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2
/data/web/.npm/bin/pm2-docker -> /data/web/.npm/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2-docker
/data/web/.npm/bin/pm2-runtime -> /data/web/.npm/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2-runtime
+ pm2@5.1.2
added 181 packages from 200 contributors in 7.411s
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Add user NPM prefix bin directory to PATH
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.npm/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Reload bash config
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ source ~/.bashrc
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Check if pm2 program can be found
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ which pm2
/data/web/.npm/bin/pm2

Enabling supervisord

To make use of supervisord, we first have to make sure it is enabled and running. This can be done by running the command hypernode-systemctl settings supervisor_enabled true. Then run the command livelog to wait for the changes to be applied.

The example application

For this article we’ll use a simple web server application written in Python. Feel free to use your own application!

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer
import time

class MyApplication(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header("Content-Type", "text/plain")
        self.end_headers()
        self.wfile.write(bytes("Hello, Visitor!\n", "utf-8"))

def main():
    print("Starting the example application")
    web_server = HTTPServer(("localhost", 8000), MyApplication)
    print("Server started at http://localhost:8000/")

    try:
        web_server.serve_forever()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass

    web_server.server_close()
    print("Server stopped")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

The application only handles GET requests and responds with the text “Hello, Visitor!”. Save the file to /data/web/my_application/main.py and give it execution permissions with the command chmod +x /data/web/my_application/main.py.

Configuring and running PM2

Now that we have PM2 installed, supervisor available and an application to run, we can combine all the things together. Create a file at /data/web/supervisor/my_application.conf with the following contents.

[program:pm2_my_application]
directory=/data/web/my_application
command=/data/web/.npm/bin/pm2-runtime --interpreter=python3 start main.py
autostart=true
autorestart=true

Note

In this example, we try to run a Python application, so we specify the interpreter. Most likely, you’re running a Node.js application. In that case you don’t need to specify the --interpreter option, for example:

[program:pm2_my_application]
directory=/data/web/my_application
command=/data/web/.npm/bin/pm2-runtime start main.js
autostart=true
autorestart=true

For more information about options and configuration of PM2 and supervisor, please see the following links:

Now we’re almost done, we only need to execute a few commands to load the supervisord configuration and start the PM2 process manager.

app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Reload supervisor config files
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ supervisorctl reread
pm2_my_application: available
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Check which processes are available
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ supervisorctl avail
pm2_my_application               avail     auto      999:999
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Add our process to be managed by supervisor
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ supervisorctl add pm2_my_application
pm2_my_application: added process group
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ # Check status of running processes
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ supervisorctl status
pm2_my_application               RUNNING   pid 25139, uptime 0:00:04
app@abbt5w-example-magweb-cmbl:~$ curl http://localhost:8000/
Hello, Visitor!