I tried setting up a do-nothing Node app, and it failed.
I developed some Node.js code offline in containers. I now want to try deploying it on DreamHost. I am doing it incrementally, adding features one by one. Starting with “Hello World” and going from there.
I set up a new subdomain and enabled Passenger. I was able to serve up an index.html file. I followed https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/360029083351-Installing-a-custom-version-of-NVM-and-Node-js and installed Node and nvm (using the versions recommended in that artcle). I then installed a few packages I plan to use (most notably Express, the rest won’t come into play until later).
With just a Hello World app, that failed. The error message is below. But, I checked all the relevant files and they all have global read and execute permissions. I’m wondering if it is something else. I tried multiple Hello World examples for app.js, copied directly from different tutorials, none of which worked (but they do work locally). My more complex code also does not work, but that is the next step.
What am I missing? I followed the directions exactly. What other landmines do I have to look forward to? I really don’t want to spend time wrestling with infrastructure, I want it to “just work”, ideally.
An error occurred while starting the web application. It exited before signalling successful startup back to Phusion Passenger. Please read this article for more information about this problem. Raw process output: *** ERROR ***: Cannot execute /home/<user name>/.nvm/versions/node/v12.16.3: Permission denied (13)
Unclear what solved the issue.
Ran through changing the permissions on the files, as would seem obvious. Changed '/home/<user name>/.nvm/versions/node/v12.16.3' to '/home/<user name>/.nvm/versions/node/v12.16.3/bin/node' in the .htaccess file. Neither of those seemed to solve it.
Repeated the process again later. Followed it by `touch <webapp directory>/tmp/restart.txt' and it started working. I had been editing files in the web app's directory, so it isn't clear what touching that file did.