PM2 start script with multiple arguments (serve) - pm2

Question

I'm trying to run serve frontend/dist -l 4000 from PM2. This is supposed to serve a Vue app on port 4000.
In my ecosystem.config.js, I have:
{
name: 'parker-frontend',
max_restarts: 5,
script: 'serve',
args: 'frontend/dist -l 4000',
instances: 1,
},
But when I do pm2 start, in the logs I have the following message:
Exposing /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/parker/frontend/dist directory on port NaN
Whereas if I run the same command: serve frontend/dist -l 4000, it runs just fine on port 4000.

Answer 1

After running serve frontend/dist -l 5000 I got an error in the PM2 logs.
In it's call stack I've found:
at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/node_modules/pm2/lib/API/Serve.js:242:4)
Notice the path: /usr/lib/node_modules/pm2/lib/API/Serve.js
There is another command that's called serve in pm2 itself that was ran instead of the correct one. This is not the npm i -g serve I installed before. This is due to how Node package resolution works - it prioritizes local modules first.
To use the globally installed version (the correct one), you need to specify the exact path to your global serve.
To find out the path - on Linux, you can just do:
$ which serve
/usr/local/bin/serve
Then put the path in your ecosystem.config.js script property.
Final working ecosystem.config.js:
{
name: 'parker-frontend',
script: '/usr/local/bin/serve', //pm2 has it's own 'serve' which doesn't work, make sure to use global
args: 'frontend/dist -l 5000',
instances: 1,
},
```