pm2 Startup not starting up on Ubuntu

Question

I am having difficulty getting pm2 to restart (itself and two node/express files, app.js & app2.js) on a server re-boot.

Below is the processes I have tried:

pm2 startup
pm2 start app.js
pm2 start app2.js
pm2 startup ubuntu (also tried systemd and with/without -u username)
pm2 save

I ran the above commands in every possible combination and nothing worked. I tried running as root and it did not work either.

My ~/.pm2/dump.pm2 file contains information so I am not sure where else to look.

I have attempted to modify my /etc/init.d/pm2-init.sh file according to this issue but it did not help.

My Setup:
Digital Ocean Server
Ubuntu 15.10
Node v5.4.1
PM2 v 1.0.0

Other references I tried..
http://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/startup/
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-pm2-to-setup-a-node-js-production-environment-on-an-ubuntu-vps
https://gist.github.com/leommoore/5998406
https://www.terlici.com/2015/06/20/running-node-forever.html
https://serversforhackers.com/node-process-management-with-pm2 http://nodered.org/docs/getting-started/running.html#starting-node-red-on-boot
https://github.com/Unitech/pm2/issues/1316

So far, each time I reboot the server, pm2 fails to startup automatically (unless I need to wait a few minutes? - nginx restarts instantly).

Can someone help me out with this? What is the order in which the commands should be run? Do I need to modify any additional files?

Answer 1

You have to save your node app using

 pm2 start [app_name]
 pm2 save

Then do:

 pm2 startup [operation system]

This will create a dump.pm2 file that pm2 needs to run your app on reboot.

Operation system:

• systemd: Ubuntu >= 16, CentOS >= 7, Arch, Debian >= 7
• upstart: Ubuntu <= 14
• launchd: Darwin, MacOSx
• openrc: Gentoo Linux, Arch Linux
• rcd: FreeBSD
• systemv: Centos 6, Amazon Linux

Answer 2

The solution for me was restarting pm2 with systemctl: systemctl reload-or-restart pm2-root

When I setup my Ubuntu 18.04 server on the first time, I ran pm2 start app.js to start my app. Then when I tried to run pm2 startup + pm2 save to restart the app on boot, this seemed to be not working, as by running systemctl list-units, pm2 didn’t show up in the services list. Even though the app was running (pm2 list confirmed that). So I ran systemctl list-units -all, and pm2 showed as “inactive” and “dead”.

So I did:

• systemctl status pm2-root (just to confirm that it was "inactive"/"dead")

• systemctl reload-or-restart pm2-root (to restart pm2 through systemctl)

• systemctl status pm2-root (to confirm that pm2 now was “active”/“running”)

• Then I also ran systemctl enable pm2-root, to enable PM2 to run on startup (not sure if necessary)

• And pm2 startup + pm2 save again (for the start on boot)

OBS.: I used pm2-root in my commands, as I was running pm2 with root user, but you should replace for your user (pm2-<USER>), if needed.