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PM2

P(rocess) M(anager) 2

PM2 is a production process manager for Node.js / io.js applications with a built-in load balancer. It allows you to keep applications alive forever, to reload them without downtime and to facilitate common system admin tasks.

Starting an application in production mode is as easy as:

$ pm2 start app.js

PM2 is constantly assailed by more than 400 tests.

Compatible with io.js and Node.js. Compatible with CoffeeScript. Works on Linux (stable) & MacOSx (stable) & Windows (stable).

Version npmNPM DownloadsBuild StatusDependencies

NPM

PM2 can generate startup scripts and configure them. PM2 is also smart enough to save all your process list and to bring back all your processes at machine restart.

Command

$ pm2 startup
# auto-detect platform
$ pm2 startup [platform]
# render startup-script for a specific platform, the [platform] could be one of:
#   ubuntu|centos|redhat|gentoo|systemd|darwin|amazon

Once you have started the apps and want to keep them on server reboot do:

$ pm2 save

Warning It's tricky to make this feature work generically, so once PM2 has setup your startup script, reboot your server to make sure that PM2 has launched your apps!

Startup Systems support

Three types of startup scripts are available:

  • SystemV init script (with the option ubuntu or centos)
  • OpenRC init script (with the option gentoo)
  • SystemD init script (with the systemd option)

The startup options are using:

  • ubuntu will use updaterc.d and the script lib/scripts/pm2-init.sh
  • centos/redhat will use chkconfig and the script lib/scripts/pm2-init-centos.sh
  • gentoo will use rc-update and the script lib/scripts/pm2
  • systemd will use systemctl and the script lib/scripts/pm2.service
  • darwin will use launchd to load a specific plist to resurrect processes after reboot.

User permissions

Let's say you want the startup script to be executed under another user.

Just use the -u <username> option !

$ pm2 startup ubuntu -u www

Related commands

Dump all processes status and environment managed by PM2:

$ pm2 [dump|save]

It populates the file ~/.pm2/dump.pm2 by default.

To bring back the latest dump:

$ pm2 resurrect

PM2 empowers your process management workflow, by allowing you to fine-tune the behavior, options, environment variables, logs files... of each process you need to manage via JSON/JSON5/JS configuration.

It's particularly usefull for micro service based applications.

Declaration via JS, JSON or JSON5 file

You can define parameters for your apps in a JS/JSON file:

{
  "apps" : [{
    "name"        : "worker-app",
    "script"      : "worker.js",
    "args"        : ["--toto=heya coco", "-d", "1"],
    "watch"       : true,
    "node_args"   : "--harmony",
    "merge_logs"  : true,
    "cwd"         : "/this/is/a/path/to/start/script",
    "env": {
        "NODE_ENV": "production",
        "AWESOME_SERVICE_API_TOKEN": "xxx"
    }
  },{
    "name"       : "api-app",
    "script"     : "api.js",
    "instances"  : 4,
    "exec_mode"  : "cluster_mode",
    "error_file" : "./examples/child-err.log",
    "out_file"   : "./examples/child-out.log",
    "pid_file"   : "./examples/child.pid"
  }]
}

Then you can run:

# Start all apps
$ pm2 start processes.js[on]

# Stop
$ pm2 stop processes.js[on]

# Restart
$ pm2 start processes.js[on]
## Or
$ pm2 restart processes.js[on]

# Reload
$ pm2 reload processes.js[on]

# Graceful Reload
$ pm2 gracefulReload processes.js[on]

# Delete from PM2
$ pm2 delete processes.js[on]

Options

The following are valid options for JSON app declarations:

{
  "name"             : "node-app",
  "cwd"              : "/srv/node-app/current",
  "args"             : ["--toto=heya coco", "-d", "1"],
  "script"           : "bin/app.js",
  "node_args"        : ["--harmony", " --max-stack-size=102400000"],
  "log_date_format"  : "YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm Z",
  "error_file"       : "/var/log/node-app/node-app.stderr.log",
  "out_file"         : "log/node-app.stdout.log",
  "pid_file"         : "pids/node-geo-api.pid",
  "instances"        : 6, //or 0 => 'max'
  "min_uptime"       : "200s", // 200 seconds, defaults to 1000
  "max_restarts"     : 10, // defaults to 15
  "max_memory_restart": "1M", // 1 megabytes, e.g.: "2G", "10M", "100K", 1024 the default unit is byte.
  "cron_restart"     : "1 0 * * *",
  "watch"            : false,
  "ignore_watch"      : ["[\\/\\\\]\\./", "node_modules"],
  "merge_logs"       : true,
  "exec_interpreter" : "node",
  "exec_mode"        : "fork",
  "autorestart"      : false, // enable/disable automatic restart when an app crashes or exits
  "vizion"           : false, // enable/disable vizion features (versioning control)
  "env": {
    "NODE_ENV": "production",
    "AWESOME_SERVICE_API_TOKEN": "xxx"
  }
}

List of all JSON-declaration fields avaibles

Field Type Example Description
name string "myAPI" name your app will have in PM2
script string "bin/app.js" path of your app
args list ["--enable-logs", "-n", "15"] arguments given to your app when it is launched
node_args list ["--harmony", "--max-stack-size=1024"] arguments given to node when it is launched
cwd string "/var/www/app/prod" the directory from which your app will be launched
exec_mode string "cluster" "fork" mode is used by default, "cluster" mode can be configured with instances field
instances number 4 number of instances for your clustered app, 0 means as much instances as you have CPU cores. a negative value means CPU cores - value (e.g -1 on a 4 cores machine will spawn 3 instances)
exec_interpreter string "node" defaults to "node". can be "python", "ruby", "bash" or whatever interpreter you wish to use. "none" will execute your app as a binary executable
log_date_format string "YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm Z" format in which timestamps will be displayed in the logs
error_file string "/var/log/node-app/node-app.stderr.log" path to the specified error log file. PM2 generates one by default if not specified and you can find it by typing pm2 desc <app id>
out_file string "/var/log/node-app/node-app.stdout.log" path to the specified output log file. PM2 generates one by default if not specified and you can find it by typing pm2 desc <app id>
pid_file string "pids/node-geo-api.pid" path to the specified pid file. PM2 generates one by default if not specified and you can find it by typing pm2 desc <app id>
merge_logs boolean false defaults to false. if true, it will merge logs from all instances of the same app into the same file
cron_restart string "1 0 * * *" a cron pattern to restart your app. only works in "cluster" mode for now. soon to be avaible in "fork" mode as well
watch boolean true enables the watch feature, defaults to "false". if true, it will restart your app everytime a file change is detected on the folder or subfolder of your app.
ignore_watch list ["[\/\\]\./", "node_modules"] list of regex to ignore some file or folder names by the watch feature
min_uptime number 1000 min uptime of the app to be considered started (i.e. if the app crashes in this time frame, the app will only be restarted the number set in max_restarts (default 15), after that it's errored)
max_restarts number 10 number of consecutive unstable restarts (less than 1sec interval or custom time via min_uptime) before your app is considered errored and stop being
max_memory_restart string "150M" your app will be restarted by PM2 if it exceeds the amount of memory specified. human-friendly format : it can be "10M", "100K", "2G" and so on...
env object {"NODE_ENV": "production", "ID": "42"} env variables which will appear in your app
autorestart boolean false true by default. if false, PM2 will not restart your app if it crashes or ends peacefully
vizion boolean false true by default. if false, PM2 will start without vizion features (versioning control metadatas)
post_update list ["npm install", "echo launching the app"] a list of commands which will be executed after you perform a Pull/Upgrade operation from Keymetrics dashboard
force boolean true defaults to false. if true, you can start the same script several times which is usually not allowed by PM2
next_gen_js boolean true defaults to false. if true, PM2 will launch your app using embedded BabelJS features which means you can run ES6/ES7 javascript code
restart_delay number 4000 time to wait before restarting a crashed app (in milliseconds). defaults to 0.

Schema

The completely definitions:

{
  "script": {
    "type": "string",
    "require": true
  },
  "args": {
    "type": [
      "array",
      "string"
    ]
  },
  "node_args": {
    "type": [
      "array",
      "string"
    ]
  },
  "name": {
    "type": "string"
  },
  "max_memory_restart": {
    "type": [
      "string",
      "number"
    ],
    "regex": "^\\d+(G|M|K)?$",
    "ext_type": "sbyte",
    "desc": "it should be a NUMBER - byte, \"[NUMBER]G\"(Gigabyte), \"[NUMBER]M\"(Megabyte) or \"[NUMBER]K\"(Kilobyte)"
  },
  "instances": {
    "type": "number",
    "min": 0
  },
  "log_file": {
    "type": [
      "boolean",
      "string"
    ],
    "alias": "log"
  },
  "error_file": {
    "type": "string",
    "alias": "error"
  },
  "out_file": {
    "type": "string",
    "alias": "output"
  },
  "pid_file": {
    "type": "string",
    "alias": "pid"
  },
  "cron_restart": {
    "type": "string",
    "alias": "cron"
  },
  "cwd": {
    "type": "string"
  },
  "merge_logs": {
    "type": "boolean"
  },
  "watch": {
    "type": "boolean"
  },
  "ignore_watch": {
    "type": [
      "array",
      "string"
    ]
  },
  "watch_options": {
    "type": "object"
  },
  "env": {
    "type": ["object", "string"]
  },
  "^env_\\S*$": {
    "type": [
      "object",
      "string"
    ]
  },
  "log_date_format": {
    "type": "string"
  },
  "min_uptime": {
    "type": [
      "number",
      "string"
    ],
    "regex": "^\\d+(h|m|s)?$",
    "desc": "it should be a NUMBER - milliseconds, \"[NUMBER]h\"(hours), \"[NUMBER]m\"(minutes) or \"[NUMBER]s\"(seconds)",
    "min": 100,
    "ext_type": "stime"
  },
  "max_restarts": {
    "type": "number",
    "min": 0
  },
  "exec_mode": {
    "type": "string",
    "regex": "^(cluster|fork)(_mode)?$",
    "alias": "executeCommand",
    "desc": "it should be \"cluster\"(\"cluster_mode\") or \"fork\"(\"fork_mode\") only"
  },
  "exec_interpreter": {
    "type": "string",
    "alias": "interpreter"
  },
  "write": {
    "type": "boolean"
  },
  "force": {
    "type": "boolean"
  }
}

Considerations

All command line options passed when using the JSON app declaration will be dropped i.e.

$ cat node-app-1.json

{
  "name" : "node-app-1",
  "script" : "app.js",
  "cwd" : "/srv/node-app-1/current"
}

You can start as many JSON app declarations as you want. Continuing from above:

$ pm2 start node-app-2.json
$ ps aux | grep node-app
root  14735  5.8  1.1  752476  83932 ? Sl 00:08 0:00 pm2: node-app-1
root  24271  0.0  0.3  696428  24208 ? Sl 17:36 0:00 pm2: node-app-2

Note that if you execute pm2 start node-app-2 again, it will spawn an additional instance node-app-2.

cwd: your JSON declaration does not need to reside with your script. If you wish to maintain the JSON(s) in a location other than your script (say, /etc/pm2/conf.d/node-app.json) you will need to use the cwd feature (Note, this can be really helpful for capistrano style directory structures that uses symlinks). Files can be either relative to the cwd directory, or absolute (see example below).

All the keys can be used in a JSON configured file, but will remain almost the same on the command line e.g.:

exec_interpreter  -> --interpreter
exec_mode         -> --execute_command
max_restarts      -> --max_restarts
force             -> --force

If the alias exists, you can use it as a CLI option, but do not forget to turn the camelCasing to underscore split executeCommand to --execute_command.

Notes

  • Using quotes to make an ESC, e.g.:

    $pm2 start test.js --node-args "port=3001 sitename='first pm2 app'"

    The nodeArgs argument will be parsed as

    [
  "port=3001",
  "sitename=first pm2 app"
]

    but not

    [
  "port=3001",
  "sitename='first",
  "pm2",
  "app'"
]

  • RegExp key

    Matches the keys of configured JSON by RegExp (not by string comparison), e.g. ^env_\\S*$ will match all env keys like env_production, env_test, and valid them according to the schemas specifications.

  • Special ext_type

    • min_uptime

      Value of min_uptime can be:

      • Number e.g. "min_uptime": 3000 means 3000 milliseconds.
      • String Therefore, we are making it short and easy to configure: h, m and s, e.g.: "min_uptime": "1h" means one hour, "min_uptime": "5m" means five minutes and "min_uptime": "10s" means ten seconds (those will be transformed into milliseconds).

    • max_memory_restart

      Value of max_memory_restart can be:

      • Number e.g. "max_memory_restart": 1024 means 1024 bytes (NOT BITS).
      • String Therefore, we are making it short and easy to configure: G, M and K, e.g.: "max_memory_restart": "1G" means one gigabytes, "max_memory_restart": "5M" means five megabytes and "max_memory_restart": "10K" means ten kilobytes (those will be transformed into byte(s)).

  • Optional values

    For example exec_mode can take cluster (cluster_mode) or fork (fork_mode) as possible values.

  • Things to know

    • maximum

      "instances": 0 means that we will launch the maximum processes possible according to the numbers of CPUs (cluster mode)

    • array

      args, node_args and ignore_watch could be type of Array (e.g.: "args": ["--toto=heya coco", "-d", "1"]) or string (e.g.: "args": "--to='heya coco' -d 1")

Once you declared this file, you will now just need to specify your Cloud Provider to start this file.

The cluster mode allows to scale your Node.js application accross all CPUs available and to update them without any downtime! Your application does not need any modification to be able to use this nifty feature.

It's perfectly fitted for networked applications handling HTTP(s)/UDP/TCP connections.

To enable the cluster mode, just pass the -i option:

$ pm2 start app.js -i 1

You can pass multiple values to the instances (-i) option:

# Start the maximum processes depending on available CPUs
$ pm2 start app.js -i 0

# Start the maximum processes -1 depending on available CPUs
$ pm2 start app.js -i -1

# Start 3 processes
$ pm2 start app.js -i 3

Considerations

  • You don't need to modify anything from your code to be able to use this nifty feature.
  • If in Fork Mode, In your application, the environment variable NODE_APP_INSTANCE is exposed so you can listen for different port if needed. (e.g .listen(8000 + process.env.NODE_APP_INSTANCE))
  • Be sure your application is stateless meaning that there is not any local data stored in the process, like sessions/websocket connections etc. Use Redis, Mongo or other DB to share states between processes.

Reload without Downtime

As opposed to restart, which kills and restarts the process, reload achieves a 0-second-downtime reload.

Warning This feature only works for apps in cluster mode, that uses HTTP/HTTPS/Socket connections.

To reload an app:

$ pm2 reload api

If the reload system hasn't managed to reload your app, a timeout will fallback to a classic restart.

Graceful reload

Sometimes you can experience a very long reload, or a reload that doesn't work (fallback to restart) meaning that your app still has open connections on exit. Or you may need to close all databases connections, clear a data queue or whatever.

To work around this problem you have to use the graceful reload.

Graceful reload is a mechanism that will send a shutdown message to your process before reloading it. You can control the time that the app has to shutdown via the PM2_GRACEFUL_TIMEOUT environment variable.

Example:

process.on('message', function(msg) {
  if (msg == 'shutdown') {
    // Your process is going to be reloaded
    // You have to close all database/socket.io/* connections

    console.log('Closing all connections...');

    // You will have 4000ms to close all connections before
    // the reload mechanism will try to do its job

    setTimeout(function() {
      console.log('Finished closing connections');
      // This timeout means that all connections have been closed
      // Now we can exit to let the reload mechanism do its job
      process.exit(0);
    }, 1500);
  }
});

Then use the command:

$ pm2 gracefulReload [all|name]

When PM2 starts a new process to replace an old one, it will wait for the new process to begin listening to a connection or a timeout before sending the shutdown message to the old one. You can define the timeout value with the PM2_GRACEFUL_LISTEN_TIMEOUT environament variable. If a script does not need to listen to a connection, it can manually tell PM2 that the process has started up by calling process.send('online').

Node 0.10.x & Cluster mode

Node 0.10 is not compatible with PM2 Cluster Mode, please upgrade.

Contributing/Development mode

To play with PM2, it's very simple:

$ pm2 kill   # kill the current pm2
$ git clone my_pm2_fork.git
$ cd pm2/
$ DEBUG=* ./bin/pm2 --no-daemon

Each time you edit the code, be sure to kill and restart PM2 to make changes taking effect.

DEBUG="*" Allows to display all possible debug logs in ~/.pm2/pm2.log

Install PM2 development

$ npm install git://github.com/Unitech/pm2#development -g

Launch the tests

Build Status Build Status

Just try the tests before using PM2 on your production server

$ git clone https://github.com/Unitech/pm2.git
$ cd pm2
$ npm install  # Or do NODE_ENV=development npm install if some packages are missing
$ npm test

If a test is broken please report us issues here Also make sure you have all dependencies needed. For Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
# nvm is a Node.js version manager - https://github.com/creationix/nvm
$ wget -qO- https://raw.github.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | sh
$ nvm install v0.11.14
$ nvm use v0.11.14
$ nvm alias default v0.11.14

PM2 embeds a simple and powerful deployment system with revision tracing. It's based on https://github.com/visionmedia/deploy

A step-by-step tutorial is available here : Deploy and Iterate faster with PM2 deploy

Getting started

Please read the Considerations to use PM2 deploy

1- Generate a sample ecosystem.json5 file that list processes and deployment environment

$ pm2 ecosystem

In the current folder a ecosystem.json5 file will be created. It contains this:

{
  "apps" : [{
    "name"      : "API",
    "script"    : "app.js",
    "env": {
      "COMMON_VARIABLE": "true"
    },
    "env_production" : {
      "NODE_ENV": "production"
    }
  },{
    "name"      : "WEB",
    "script"    : "web.js"
  }],
  "deploy" : {
    "production" : {
      "user" : "node",
      "host" : "212.83.163.1",
      "ref"  : "origin/master",
      "repo" : "[email protected]:repo.git",
      "path" : "/var/www/production",
      "post-deploy" : "pm2 startOrRestart ecosystem.json --env production"
    },
    "dev" : {
      "user" : "node",
      "host" : "212.83.163.1",
      "ref"  : "origin/master",
      "repo" : "[email protected]:repo.git",
      "path" : "/var/www/development",
      "post-deploy" : "pm2 startOrRestart ecosystem.json --env dev",
      "env"  : {
        "NODE_ENV": "dev"
      }
    }
  }
}

Edit the file according to your needs.

2- Be sure that you have the public ssh key on your local machine

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
$ ssh-copy-id [email protected]

3- Now initialize the remote folder with:

$ pm2 deploy <configuration_file> <environment> setup

E.g:

$ pm2 deploy ecosystem.json production setup

This command will create all the folders on your remote server.

4- Deploy your code

$ pm2 deploy ecosystem.json production

Now your code will be populated, installed and started with PM2

Deployment options

Display deploy help via pm2 deploy help:

$ pm2 deploy <configuration_file> <environment> <command>

  Commands:
    setup                run remote setup commands
    update               update deploy to the latest release
    revert [n]           revert to [n]th last deployment or 1
    curr[ent]            output current release commit
    prev[ious]           output previous release commit
    exec|run <cmd>       execute the given <cmd>
    list                 list previous deploy commits
    [ref]                deploy to [ref], the "ref" setting, or latest tag

Commands

$ pm2 startOrRestart all.json            # Invoke restart on all apps in JSON
$ pm2 startOrReload all.json             # Invoke reload
$ pm2 startOrGracefulReload all.json     # Invoke gracefulReload

Using file key for authenticating

Just add the "key" attribute with file path to the .pem key within the attributes "user", "hosts"...

    "production" : {
      "key"  : "/path/to/some.pem",
      "user" : "node",
      "host" : "212.83.163.1",
      "ref"  : "origin/master",
      "repo" : "[email protected]:repo.git",
      "path" : "/var/www/production",
      "post-deploy" : "pm2 startOrRestart ecosystem.json --env production"
    },

Considerations

  • You might want to commit your node_modules folder (#622) or add the npm install command to the post-deploy section: "post-deploy" : "npm install && pm2 startOrRestart ecosystem.json --env production"
  • Verify that your remote server has the permission to git clone the repository
  • You can declare specific environment variable depending on the environment you want to deploy the code to. For instance to declare variables for the production environment, just add "env_production": {} and declare that variables.
  • PM2 will look by default to ecosystem.json. So you can skip the <configuration_file> options if it's the case
  • You can embed the "apps" & "deploy" section in the package.json
  • It deploys your code via ssh, you don't need any dependencies
  • Process are initialized / started automatically depending on application name in ecosystem.json
  • PM2-deploy repository is there: pm2-deploy

Contributing

The module is https://github.com/Unitech/pm2-deploy Feel free to PR for any changes or fix.

Stateless apps

We recommend (and you must) write stateless NodeJS apps. Apps that don't retain any form of local variables or local instances or whatever local. Every data, states, websocket session, session data, must be shared via any kind of database.

We recommend using Redis for sharing session data, websocket.

We recommend following the 12 factor convention : http://12factor.net/

Setup pm2 on a server

How To Use pm2 to Setup a Node.js Production Environment On An Ubuntu VPS

Log and PID files

By default, logs (error and output), pid files, dumps, and PM2 logs are located in ~/.pm2/:

.pm2/
├── dump.pm2
├── custom_options.sh
├── pm2.log
├── pm2.pid
├── logs
└── pids

PM2 allows you to manage logs easily. You can display all application logs in real-time, flush them, and reload them. There are also different ways to configure how PM2 will handle your logs (separated in different files, merged, with timestamp...) without modifying anything in your code.

Displaying logs in real-time

Displaying logs of a specified process or of all processes in real-time:

$ pm2 logs
$ pm2 logs big-api

Flushing logs

This will empty all current application logs managed by PM2:

$ pm2 flush # Clear all the logs

Or you can install Log rotate to handle the log rotation.

Reloading all logs

Reloading logs is specially usefull for Logrotate or any other rotating log system. You can reload logs by sending SIGUSR2 to the PM2 process. You can also reload all logs via the command line with:

$ pm2 reloadLogs

Log configuration

CLI

Example:

$ pm2 start echo.js --merge-logs --log-date-format="YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm Z"

Options:

--merge-logs                 do not postfix log file with process id
--log-date-format <format>   prefix logs with formated timestamp
-l --log [path]              specify entire log file (error and out are both included)
-o --output <path>           specify out log file
-e --error <path>            specify error log file

JSON way

{
  "script"          : "echo.js",
  "error_file"        : "err.log",
  "out_file"        : "out.log",
  "merge_logs"      : true,
  "log_date_format" : "YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm Z"
}

Note: To merge all logs into the same file set the same value for error_file, out_file.

Settings up a native logrotate

$ sudo pm2 logrotate -u user

This will write a basic logrotate configuration to /etc/logrotate.d/pm2-user that will look like this:

/home/user/.pm2/pm2.log /home/user/.pm2/logs/*.log {
        rotate 12
        weekly
        missingok
        notifempty
        compress
        delaycompress
        create 0640 user user
}

pm2-logrotate Module

pm2-logrotate auto rotate logs of PM2 and applications managed

$ pm2 install pm2-logrotate

Monitoring CPU/Memory

PM2 gives you a simple way to monitor the resource usage of your application. You can monitor memory and cpu very easily, straight from your terminal:

$ pm2 monit

Keymetrics monitoring

Keymetrics Dashboard

If you manage your NodeJS app with PM2, Keymetrics makes it easy to monitor and manage apps accross servers. Feel free to try it:

Discover the monitoring dashboard for PM2

Thanks in advance and we hope that you like PM2!

Max Memory Restart

PM2 allows to restart an application based on a memory limit.

CLI

$ pm2 start big-array.js --max-memory-restart 20M

JSON

{
  "name"   : "max_mem",
  "script" : "big-array.js",
  "max_memory_restart" : "20M"
}

Programmatic

pm2.start({
  name               : "max_mem",
  script             : "big-array.js",
  max_memory_restart : "20M"
}, function(err, proc) {
  // Processing
});

Units

Units can be K(ilobyte), M(egabyte), G(igabyte).

50M
50K
1G

PM2 can be used programmatically, meaning that you can embed a process manager directly in your code, spawn processes, keep them alive even if the main script is exited.

It's also usefull when you deploy a Node.js application in any kind of Cloud Provider / PaaS

Check out this article for more informations.

Simple example

This example shows you how to start app.js with some configuration attributes. What is passed to start is the same than what you can declare in a JS/JSON configuration file:

$ npm install pm2 --save
var pm2 = require('pm2');

pm2.connect(function() {
  pm2.start({
    script    : 'app.js',         // Script to be run
    exec_mode : 'cluster',        // Allow your app to be clustered
    instances : 4,                // Optional: Scale your app by 4
    max_memory_restart : '100M'   // Optional: Restart your app if it reaches 100Mo
  }, function(err, apps) {
    pm2.disconnect();
  });
});

Programmatic API

Method name API
Connect/Launch pm2.connect(fn(err){})
Disconnect pm2.disconnect(fn(err, proc){})

Consideration with .connect: the .connect method connect to the local PM2, but if PM2 is not up, it will launch it and will put in in background as you launched it via CLI.

<tr>
  <td><b>Reload</b></td>
  <td>pm2.reload(proc_name|all, fn(err, proc){})</td>
</tr>
  <tr>
  <td><b>Graceful Reload</b></td>
  <td>pm2.gracefulReload(proc_name|all, fn(err, proc){})</td>
</tr>
Method name API
Start pm2.start(script_path|json_object|json_path, options, fn(err, proc){})
Options nodeArgs(arr), scriptArgs(arr), name(str), instances(int), error(str), output(str), pid(str), cron(str), mergeLogs(bool), watch(bool), runAsUser(int), runAsGroup(int), executeCommand(bool), interpreter(str), write(bool)
Restart pm2.restart(proc_name|proc_id|all, fn(err, proc){})
Stop pm2.stop(proc_name|proc_id|all, fn(err, proc){})
Delete pm2.delete(proc_name|proc_id|all, fn(err, proc){})
Method name API
List pm2.list(fn(err, list){})
Describe process pm2.describe(proc_name|proc_id, fn(err, list){})
Dump (save) pm2.dump(fn(err, ret){})
Flush logs pm2.flush(fn(err, ret){})
Reload logs pm2.reloadLogs(fn(err, ret){})
Send signal pm2.sendSignalToProcessName(signal,proc,fn(err, ret){})
Generate start script pm2.startup(platform, fn(err, ret){})
Kill PM2 pm2.killDaemon(fn(err, ret){})

PM2 comes with a handy development tool that allow you to start an application and restart it on file change:

# Start your application in development mode
# = Print the logs and restart on file change

$ pm2-dev run my-app.js

Managing applications states

PM2 is a process manager. It manages your applications states, so you can start, stop, restart and delete processes.

Start a process:

$ pm2 start app.js --name "my-api"
$ pm2 start web.js --name "web-interface"

Now let's say I need to stop the web-interface:

$ pm2 stop web-interface

As you can see the process hasn't disappeared. It's still there but in stopped status.

To restart it just do:

$ pm2 restart web-interface

Now I want to delete the app from the PM2 process list. To do so:

$ pm2 delete web-interface

You can declare options via configuration file too

Process listing

To list all running processes:

$ pm2 list
# Or
$ pm2 [list|ls|l|status]

To get more details about a specific process:

$ pm2 show 0

Start any process type

For scripts in other languages:

$ pm2 start echo.pl --interpreter=perl

$ pm2 start echo.coffee
$ pm2 start echo.php
$ pm2 start echo.py
$ pm2 start echo.sh
$ pm2 start echo.rb

The interpreter is set by default with this equivalence:

{
  ".sh": "bash",
  ".py": "python",
  ".rb": "ruby",
  ".coffee" : "coffee",
  ".php": "php",
  ".pl" : "perl",
  ".js" : "node"
}

JSON configuration

To run a non-JS interpreter you must set exec_mode to fork_mode and exec_interpreter to your interpreter of choice. For example:

{
  "apps" : [{
    "name"       : "bash-worker",
    "script"     : "./a-bash-script",
    "exec_interpreter": "bash",
    "exec_mode"  : "fork_mode"
  }, {
    "name"       : "ruby-worker",
    "script"     : "./some-ruby-script",
    "exec_interpreter": "ruby",
    "exec_mode"  : "fork_mode"
  }]
}

Max Memory Restart

PM2 allows to restart an application based on a memory limit.

CLI

$ pm2 start big-array.js --max-memory-restart 20M

JSON

{
  "name"   : "max_mem",
  "script" : "big-array.js",
  "max_memory_restart" : "20M"
}

Programmatic

pm2.start({
  name               : "max_mem",
  script             : "big-array.js",
  max_memory_restart : "20M"
}, function(err, proc) {
  // Processing
});

Units

Units can be K(ilobyte), M(egabyte), G(igabyte).

50M
50K
1G

Welcome to this PM2 Quick Start! Getting started with PM2 is straightforward, it is offered as a simple and intuitive CLI, installable via NPM. Just start your application with PM2 and you're application is ready to handle ton of traffic!

Installation

The latest PM2 stable version is installable via NPM:

$ npm install pm2@latest -g

Usage

The simplest way to start, daemonize and monitor your application is this:

$ pm2 start app.js

Convenient setup

How To Use pm2 to Setup a Node.js Production Environment On An Ubuntu VPS

Setup Auto Completion

$ pm2 completion install

More information

Setup startup script

$ pm2 startup

More information

PM2 configuration folder structure

Once PM2 is started, it automatically create these folders:

  • $HOME/.pm2 will contain all PM2 related files
  • $HOME/.pm2/logs will contain all applications logs
  • $HOME/.pm2/pids will contain all applications pids
  • $HOME/.pm2/pm2.log PM2 logs
  • $HOME/.pm2/pm2.pid PM2 pid
  • $HOME/.pm2/rpc.sock Socket file for remote commands
  • $HOME/.pm2/pub.sock Socket file for publishable events
  • $HOME/.pm2/conf.js PM2 Configuration

CheatSheet

# Fork mode
$ pm2 start app.js --name my-api # Name process

# Cluster mode
$ pm2 start app.js -i 0        # Will start maximum processes with LB depending on available CPUs
$ pm2 start app.js -i max      # Same as above, but deprecated yet.

# Listing

$ pm2 list               # Display all processes status
$ pm2 jlist              # Print process list in raw JSON
$ pm2 prettylist         # Print process list in beautified JSON

$ pm2 describe 0         # Display all informations about a specific process

$ pm2 monit              # Monitor all processes

# Logs

$ pm2 logs [--raw]       # Display all processes logs in streaming
$ pm2 flush              # Empty all log file
$ pm2 reloadLogs         # Reload all logs

# Actions

$ pm2 stop all           # Stop all processes
$ pm2 restart all        # Restart all processes

$ pm2 reload all         # Will 0s downtime reload (for NETWORKED apps)
$ pm2 gracefulReload all # Send exit message then reload (for networked apps)

$ pm2 stop 0             # Stop specific process id
$ pm2 restart 0          # Restart specific process id

$ pm2 delete 0           # Will remove process from pm2 list
$ pm2 delete all         # Will remove all processes from pm2 list

# Misc

$ pm2 reset <process>    # Reset meta data (restarted time...)
$ pm2 updatePM2          # Update in memory pm2
$ pm2 ping               # Ensure pm2 daemon has been launched
$ pm2 sendSignal SIGUSR2 my-app # Send system signal to script
$ pm2 start app.js --no-daemon
$ pm2 start app.js --no-vizion
$ pm2 start app.js --no-autorestart

42 ways of starting processes

$ pm2 start app.js           # Start app.js

$ pm2 start app.js -- -a 23  # Pass arguments '-a 23' argument to app.js script

$ pm2 start app.js --name serverone # Start a process an name it as server one
                                    # you can now stop the process by doing
                                    # pm2 stop serverone

$ pm2 start app.js --node-args="--debug=7001" # --node-args to pass options to node V8

$ pm2 start app.js -i 0             # Start maximum processes depending on available CPUs (cluster mode)

$ pm2 start app.js --log-date-format "YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm Z"    # Log will be prefixed with custom time format

$ pm2 start app.json                # Start processes with options declared in app.json
                                    # Go to chapter Multi process JSON declaration for more

$ pm2 start app.js -e err.log -o out.log  # Start and specify error and out log

For scripts in other languages:

$ pm2 start echo.pl --interpreter=perl

$ pm2 start echo.coffee
$ pm2 start echo.php
$ pm2 start echo.py
$ pm2 start echo.sh
$ pm2 start echo.rb

The interpreter is set by default with this equivalence:

{
  ".sh": "bash",
  ".py": "python",
  ".rb": "ruby",
  ".coffee" : "coffee",
  ".php": "php",
  ".pl" : "perl",
  ".js" : "node"
}

Options

Options:

   -h, --help                           output usage information
   -V, --version                        output the version number
   -v --version                         get version
   -s --silent                          hide all messages
   -m --mini-list                       display a compacted list without formatting
   -f --force                           force actions
   -n --name <name>                     set a <name> for script
   -i --instances <number>              launch [number] instances (for networked app)(load balanced)
   -l --log [path]                      specify entire log file (error and out are both included)
   -o --output <path>                   specify out log file
   -e --error <path>                    specify error log file
   -p --pid <pid>                       specify pid file
   --max-memory-restart <memory>        specify max memory amount used to autorestart (in megaoctets)
   --env <environment_name>             specify environment to get specific env variables (for JSON declaration)
   -x --execute-command                 execute a program using fork system
   -u --user <username>                 define user when generating startup script
   -c --cron <cron_pattern>             restart a running process based on a cron pattern
   -w --write                           write configuration in local folder
   --interpreter <interpreter>          the interpreter pm2 should use for executing app (bash, python...)
   --log-date-format <momentjs format>  add custom prefix timestamp to logs
   --no-daemon                          run pm2 daemon in the foreground if it doesn't exist already
   --merge-logs                         merge logs from different instances but keep error and out separated
   --watch                              watch application folder for changes
   --ignore-watch <folders|files>       folder/files to be ignored watching, chould be a specific name or regex - e.g. --ignore-watch="test node_modules "some scripts""
   --node-args <node_args>              space delimited arguments to pass to node in cluster mode - e.g. --node-args="--debug=7001 --trace-deprecation"
   --no-color                           skip colors
   --no-vizion                          skip vizion features (versioning control)
   --no-autorestart                     do not automatically restart apps

How to update PM2

Install the latest pm2 version :

$ npm install pm2@latest -g

Then update the in-memory PM2 :

$ pm2 update

Tab-completion for PM2:

$ pm2 completion install

Or manually append completion script to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file:

$ pm2 completion >> ~/.bashrc # or ~/.zshrc

Then source your .bashrc or .zshrc file for current session:

$ source ~/.bashrc # or ~/.zshrc

You can add pm2 completion to your current session this way:

$ . <(pm2 completion)

Allow PM2 to bind applications on ports 80/443 without root

It’s a general rule that you shouldn’t run node as root, but only root can bind to ports less than 1024. This is where authbind comes in. Authbind allows non-root users to bind to ports less than 1024.

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

Now you can start applications with PM2 that can bind to port 80 without being root!

It's recommended to put an alias in your .bashrc file:

alias pm2='authbind --deep pm2'

Multiple PM2 on the same server

The client and daemon communicates via socket files available in $HOME/.pm2/[pub.sock|rpc.sock]

You can start multiple PM2 instances by changing the PM2_HOME environmnent variable.

$ PM2_HOME='.pm2' pm2 start echo.js --name="echo-node-1"
$ PM2_HOME='.pm3' pm2 start echo.js --name="echo-node-2"

This will start two different PM2 instances. To list processes managed by each different instances do:

$ PM2_HOME='.pm2' pm2 list
$ PM2_HOME='.pm3' pm2 list

Run Next generation Javascript

PM2 embeds BabelJS to use next generation Javascript both in development and production.

All features are supported, like watch and restart, cluster mode, reload and related.

To run an ES6/ES7 applications:

# Enable ES6/ES7 live compilation
$ pm2 start app.js --next-gen-js

# Or use the .es extension to automatically enable it
$ pm2 start app.es

Launch PM2 in no deamon

Launching PM2 without daemonizing itself:

$ pm2 start app.js --no-daemon

Sending a system signal to a process:

$ pm2 sendSignal SIGUSR2 my-app

Configuration file

You can specify the following options by editing the file ~/.pm2/custom_options.sh:

PM2_RPC_PORT
PM2_PUB_PORT
PM2_BIND_ADDR
PM2_API_PORT
PM2_GRACEFUL_TIMEOUT
PM2_MODIFY_REQUIRE
PM2_KILL_TIMEOUT

API health endpoint

$ pm2 web

Enabling Harmony ES6

The --node-args option permit to launch script with V8 flags, so to enable harmony for a process just do this:

$ pm2 start my_app.js --node-args="--harmony"

And with JSON declaration:

[{
  "name" : "ES6",
  "script" : "es6.js",
  "node_args" : "--harmony"
}]

CoffeeScript

$ pm2 start server.coffee --interpreter coffee

That's all!

JSON app configuration via pipe from stdout

Pull-requests:

#!/bin/bash

read -d '' my_json <<_EOF_
[{
    "name"       : "app1",
    "script"     : "/home/projects/pm2_nodetest/app.js",
    "instances"  : "4",
    "error_file" : "./logz/child-err.log",
    "out_file"   : "./logz/child-out.log",
    "pid_file"   : "./logz/child.pid",
    "exec_mode"  : "cluster_mode",
    "port"       : 4200
}]
_EOF_

echo $my_json | pm2 start -

User tips from issues

External resources and articles

PM2 can generate startup scripts and configure them. PM2 is also smart enough to save all your process list and to bring back all your processes at machine restart.

Command

$ pm2 startup
# auto-detect platform
$ pm2 startup [platform]
# render startup-script for a specific platform, the [platform] could be one of:
#   ubuntu|centos|redhat|gentoo|systemd|darwin|amazon

Once you have started the apps and want to keep them on server reboot do:

$ pm2 save

Warning It's tricky to make this feature work generically, so once PM2 has setup your startup script, reboot your server to make sure that PM2 has launched your apps!

Startup Systems support

Three types of startup scripts are available:

  • SystemV init script (with the option ubuntu or centos)
  • OpenRC init script (with the option gentoo)
  • SystemD init script (with the systemd option)

The startup options are using:

  • ubuntu will use updaterc.d and the script lib/scripts/pm2-init.sh
  • centos/redhat will use chkconfig and the script lib/scripts/pm2-init-centos.sh
  • gentoo will use rc-update and the script lib/scripts/pm2
  • systemd will use systemctl and the script lib/scripts/pm2.service
  • darwin will use launchd to load a specific plist to resurrect processes after reboot.

User permissions

Let's say you want the startup script to be executed under another user.

Just use the -u <username> option !

$ pm2 startup ubuntu -u www

Related commands

Dump all processes status and environment managed by PM2:

$ pm2 [dump|save]

It populates the file ~/.pm2/dump.pm2 by default.

To bring back the latest dump:

$ pm2 resurrect

Using PM2 in Cloud Providers

Some time you do no have access to a raw CLI to start your Node.js applications. By using the PM2 programmatic interface, you can manage your Node.js app very easily.

Heroku / Google App Engine / Azure

First add PM2 as a dependency in you package.json, then just create a main.js file with this content (please modify according to your needs):

Without Keymetrics

var pm2 = require('pm2');

var instances = process.env.WEB_CONCURRENCY || -1; // Set by Heroku or -1 to scale to max cpu core -1
var maxMemory = process.env.WEB_MEMORY || 512;    // " " "

pm2.connect(function() {
  pm2.start({
    script    : 'app.js',
    name      : 'production-app',     // ----> THESE ATTRIBUTES ARE OPTIONAL:
    exec_mode : 'cluster',            // ----> https://github.com/Unitech/PM2/blob/master/ADVANCED_README.md#schema
    instances : instances,
    max_memory_restart : maxMemory + 'M',   // Auto restart if process taking more than XXmo
    env: {                            // If needed declare some environment variables
      "NODE_ENV": "production",
      "AWESOME_SERVICE_API_TOKEN": "xxx"
    },
  }, function(err) {
    if (err) return console.error('Error while launching applications', err.stack || err);
    console.log('PM2 and application has been succesfully started');
  });
});

With Keymetrics

The procedure is the same, but this time we will link PM2 to Keymetrics:

var pm2 = require('pm2');

var MACHINE_NAME = 'hk1';
var PRIVATE_KEY  = 'XXXXX';   // Keymetrics Private key
var PUBLIC_KEY   = 'XXXXX';   // Keymetrics Public  key

var instances = process.env.WEB_CONCURRENCY || -1; // Set by Heroku or -1 to scale to max cpu core -1
var maxMemory = process.env.WEB_MEMORY      || 512;// " " "

pm2.connect(function() {
  pm2.start({
    script    : 'app.js',
    name      : 'production-app',     // ----> THESE ATTRIBUTES ARE OPTIONAL:
    exec_mode : 'cluster',            // ----> https://github.com/Unitech/PM2/blob/master/ADVANCED_README.md#schema
    instances : instances,
    max_memory_restart : maxMemory + 'M',   // Auto restart if process taking more than XXmo
    env: {                            // If needed declare some environment variables
      "NODE_ENV": "production",
      "AWESOME_SERVICE_API_TOKEN": "xxx"
    },
    post_update: ["npm install"]       // Commands to execute once we do a pull from Keymetrics
  }, function() {
    pm2.interact(PRIVATE_KEY, PUBLIC_KEY, MACHINE_NAME, function() {});
  });
});

Watch & Restart

PM2 can automatically restart your app when a file changes in the current directory or its subdirectories:

$ pm2 start app.js --watch

If --watch is enabled, stopping it won't stop watching:

  • pm2 stop 0 will not stop watching
  • pm2 stop --watch 0 will stop watching

Restart toggle the watch parameter when triggered.

To watch specific paths, please use a JS/JSON app declaration, watch can take a string or an array of paths. Default is true:

{
  "watch": ["server", "client"],
  "ignore_watch" : ["node_modules", "client/img"],
  "watch_options": {
    "followSymlinks": false
  }
}

As specified in the Schema:

  • watch can be a boolean, an array of paths or a string representing a path. Default to false
  • ignore_watch can be an array of paths or a string, it'll be interpreted by chokidar as a glob or a regular expression.
  • watch_options is an object that will replace options given to chokidar. Please refer to chokidar documentation for the definition.

PM2 is giving chokidar these Default options:

var watch_options = {
  persistent    : true,
  ignoreInitial : true
}

When working with NFS devices you'll need to set usePolling: true as stated in this chokidar issue.