pm2-installer is designed to automate installation of pm2 as a service on Windows.
Unfortunately, PM2 has no built-in startup support for Windows. PM2's documentation recommends using either pm2-windows-service or pm2-windows-startup. However, both of these projects have some real drawbacks.
pm2-windows-startup adds an entry to the registry to start pm2 after user login. Because it does not create a service, PM2 will not be running until a user has logged into the user interface, and will halt when they log out. It has not been updated since 2015.
pm2-windows-service uses node-windows to create a service that runs pm2. This is a much better approach, but it hasn't been maintained since 2018, has outdated dependencies that cause crashes on setup, and currently fails to run properly on Node 14. It also runs the service as the the Local System user instead of Local Service.
jessety/pm2-installer also used node-windows, but the most recent version (July 2023) includes a version of WinSW that is compiled with .NET v2, which is not supported on Windows Server 2019. It also uses a command-line permissions elevator that is blocked by Carbon Black.
This project drops node-windows in favor of a .NET v4.6.1 executable from WinSW v2.12. The supporting configuration changes from jessety/pm2-installer are maintained:
- Configure
npmto keep its global files inC:\ProgramData\npm, instead of keeping them in the current user's%APPDATA% - Install
pm2globally, using an offline cache if necessary - Create the
C:\ProgramData\pm2directory and set thePM2_HOMEenvironmental variable at the machine level - Set permissions both the new
npmandpm2folders so that the Local Service user may access them
But then, a new script to create the XML configuration for the WinSW executable is called with mostly hardcoded values. The remaining PowerShell scripts have been adjusted to support this more direct approach, and some verification of the service has been dropped.
After installation, pm2 will be running in the background under the Local Service user. It will persist across reboots and continue running regardless of which user is logged in. To add your app, run pm2 start app.js from an admin command line interface. Make sure to run pm2 save to serialize the process list.
There are a couple challenges when installing on a fresh Windows machine. The npm global directory is not accessible to other users by default, which means the Local Service user will not be able to locate the pm2 executable. Additionally, if the machine's PowerShell execution policy is Undefined or Restricted, invoking pm2 in PowerShell will fail- even though the setup script unblocks pm2.ps1.
pm2-installer includes two additional scripts to automatically fix the above issues. Invoking npm run configure will create the C:\ProgramData\npm\, and set npm to use prefix and cache locations in that directory. Running npm run configure-policy checks the machine's PowerShell execution policy and if it is either undefined or Restricted, updates it to RemoteSigned.
After you have cloned the repository onto the target machine, open an elevated terminal (e.g. right click and select "Run as Admin"). Run the following commands first:
npm run configure
npm run configure-policyThen to configure and install the service, run:
npm run setup- The
pm2service runs as theLocal Serviceuser. To interact withpm2, you need to use an elevated terminal (e.g. right click and select "Run as Admin") before running any commands that interface with the service, e.g.pm2 list. - If you update node and npm, make sure to either manually re-configure your npm & node installations or run
npm run configureagain. - This project does not currently support nvm for windows. It requires a standard node installation.
To remove the pm2 service, run:
npm run removeThis will remove the service and completely uninstall pm2.
If you used the configure script on Windows to configure npm, you can revert those settings by running:
npm run deconfigure