Running express server on cPanel

Question

I'm trying to run an express server on cPanel. For this, I'm using the facility of the "Setup Nodejs App" that cPanel provides. But after running my script from cPanel loading doesn't stop and it keeps on running.

If I try to remove this app that I just run from the "Setup Nodejs App", it gives me an error that Can't acquire the lock for the app: project-url and The received data is wrong.

Anyone knows how can I run the express server on cPanel that I'm running on my local machine by npm run start?

Answer 1

First key thing to recognize is that the "Setup NodeJS App" icon is not cPanel. It is a cPanel Plugin that CloudLinux adds.

To actually resolve the specific error that you've mentioned, you have to kill the existing Node processes that are running.

That means that you will need to do one of the following:

1. Contact your hosting provider to kill the processes for you
2. Login to your cPanel account via SSH and kill the processes (If you have ssh access)
3. Login to your cPanel account and click on the Terminal icon to kill the process (If you have access to the terminal feature)

If you can use method 2 or 3 you will first need to list the processes with with the following command:

ps auxf

Then you can kill the processes with kill command and the process ID that you found from the ps auxf command:

kill -9 PID

If your hosting provider were to do this for you they'd want to read through this guide: https://cloudlinux.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010988820--NodeJS-Selector-not-Working-with-an-Error-Can-t-acquire-lock-for-app-