Change user running nodebb & other startup issues

Jakub Urbanowicz

Hi, I've just created my forum at bb.n66.pl using the following setup:

architecture: arm64 VPS (netcup.de)
OS: Ubuntu 22.04
database: Mongodb 7.05
proxy: NginX as automatically provided by Webinoly
location: /home/user/nodebb
coexisting software: WordPress installed using the Webinoly script

Nodebb seems to be working fine and I like it. A big thank you for making it available. But I'm not sure if it's safe running it as a user with sudo privileges. I think I should have created an unprivileged user and set up nodebb as such, which leads me to the following:
Question 1: Would it be OK to change ownership of the entire nodebb directory and its content at this moment when the forum is already set up?
Question 2: I'm starting nodebb with ./nodebb start, but I'm unable to get systemd to start it. I tried snippets (with relevant adjustments for the user and nodebb location) from nodebb docs and other web resources, but they lead to startup failure, or a bad gateway error. Can somebody publish a systemd unit that's actually working?

PitaJ

We recommend running NodeBB under an unprivileged user. There shouldn't be a problem with chown/chmoding the files directly, but you could always make a copy first instead.

FrankM

@Jakub-Urbanowicz

This works for me on Debian 12.

/etc/systemd/system/nodebb.service

[Unit]
Description=NodeBB
Documentation=https://docs.nodebb.org
After=system.slice multi-user.target mongod.service

[Service]
Type=forking
User=<USER>

StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=nodebb

WorkingDirectory=/home/<USER>/nodebb
PIDFile=/home/<USER>/nodebb/pidfile
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node loader.js
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Jakub Urbanowicz

Thank you for your answers. I'll be trying these changes later today and will report back.

B-738

try to use PM2 https://pm2.keymetrics.io

Jakub Urbanowicz

@PitaJ said in Change user running nodebb & other startup issues:

There shouldn't be a problem with chown/chmoding the files directly, but you could always make a copy first instead.

Yes, there is a problem. I probably need to make some other changes besides chowning the nodebb directory and files, but I don't know what. I get the following errors

nodebb@sv:/home/homeuser/nodebb$ ./nodebb start
node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1147
  throw err;
  ^

Error: Cannot find module '/home/homeuser/nodebb/nodebb'
    at Module._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1144:15)
    at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:985:27)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:135:12)
    at node:internal/main/run_main_module:28:49 {
  code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
  requireStack: []
}

Node.js v20.11.0

Jakub Urbanowicz

@Jakub-Urbanowicz
After reverting ownership to homeuser the forum starts correctly.

Jakub Urbanowicz

@B-738 looks great, thanks; I'll try and use it when I get changing nodebb ownership in order.

Jakub Urbanowicz

Changing the user is hard. Perhaps I will remove privileges from the existing user instead.

PitaJ

You should probably move the NodeBB files out of homeuser's home if You're not planning on homeuser running it.

Jakub Urbanowicz

@PitaJ said in Change user running nodebb & other startup issues:

You should probably move the NodeBB files out of homeuser's home if You're not planning on homeuser running it.

Yeah, seems so. Could you give me a gist of what steps I would need to take to move nodebb to e.g. /var/www, please?

Jakub Urbanowicz

@B-738 said in Change user running nodebb & other startup issues:

try to use PM2 https://pm2.keymetrics.io

PM2 does much more than just start an app. Do you think I will need to change NginX proxy settings if I start nodebb with it? What if I increase the number of workers with pm2 scale app x?

josef

@Jakub-Urbanowicz said in Change user running nodebb & other startup issues:

@PitaJ said in Change user running nodebb & other startup issues:

You should probably move the NodeBB files out of homeuser's home if You're not planning on homeuser running it.

Yeah, seems so. Could you give me a gist of what steps I would need to take to move nodebb to e.g. /var/www, please?

mv /home/user/nodebb /var/www/nodebb

B-738

@Jakub-Urbanowicz I recomend to all use Caddy web server instead of Nginx ! Much better and simple , also be default use SSL (https) and do automatic update of ssl from letencrupt

OS FreeBSD
DataBase MongoDB
NodeJS NPM
PM2
Best proxy SSL server Caddy
GoLang

josef

@B-738 I also recommend Caddy, but that is not related to this topic

Jakub Urbanowicz

@FrankM your nodebb.service file worked and will do for the time being, thanks.
@PitaJ Yes, moving to /var/www helped resolve my issues, cheers.
@B-738 @josef I will try and learn Caddy and pm2 before I gain enough users to have to spawn more processes.
The topic can be marked as resolved now.