Start app as root with pm2

Question

I have a daemon that must be run as root on startup.

I use pm2 to start other apps but can not figure out if it can start an app as root. Can it be done?

If not, what are my options?

Answer 1

I had problems with sudo pm2 start api, but this was since pm2 was already running without sudo privileges, therefor you need to run:

pm2 kill sudo pm2 start api 

This kills the pm2 deamon first, so that it starts in sudo, but then you need sudo for ALL pm2 commands afterwards, like: sudo pm2 ls

Answer 2

If you only need your daemon to be run as root in order to access a port number (such as 80 or 443), the pm2 documentation recommends using authbind. So, if you want the user yourusername to have access to port 80, run:

$ sudo apt-get install authbind $ sudo touch /etc/authbind/byport/80 $ sudo chown yourusername /etc/authbind/byport/80 $ sudo chmod 755 /etc/authbind/byport/80 $ authbind --deep pm2 update 

And then use authbind --deep pm2 instead of pm2. The documentation suggests setting up an alias.