Amazon Elastic Beanstalk node and npm non-standard

Question

Amazon Beanstalk installs node and npm into really obscure places - and I'm not sure they won't change if EB decides to use a newer version of node, which would cause my application to break.

These are the locations for node and npm:

/opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-v0.8.24-linux-x64/bin/node
/opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-v0.8.24-linux-x64/bin/npm

I'm worried about the 0.8.24 part changing and I'd rather not grep for things in cron or monit scripts when trying to find something that is normally just /usr/bin/XXX.

how do I get a consistent filepath for these executables? and why does EB do this?

for reference, I tried setting the NodeVersion option in an .ebextensions/app.config, it had no effect on the install location.

Answer 1

Following Peter Johnson & Greg Tatum replies I created a symlink to the latest node executable:

container_commands:
  01_node_binary:
    command: "ln -sf `ls -td /opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-* | head -1`/bin/node /bin/node"

• I find the latest version of the node install binary
• Out of it I create a symlink in the /bin directory (which is part of the $PATH)

Answer 2

Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

Grand the access to node command

1. sudo su
2. vipw
3. nodejs:x:496:494::/tmp:/bin/bash (":wq" to save changes)
4. sudo su nodejs
5. PATH=$PATH:ls -td /opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-* | head -1/bin
6. node -v (enjoy :)

Answer 3

I created the file /.ebextensions/node.config in my project folder to declare my node version and add symlinks to the /bin folder. More information about the .ebextensions folder can be found here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/customize-containers-ec2.html

option_settings:
  - option_name: NodeVersion
    value: 0.12.2
files:
  "/bin/node" :
    mode: "755755"
    content: "/opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-v0.12.2-linux-x64/bin/node"
  "/bin/npm" :
    mode: "755755"
    content: "/opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-v0.12.2-linux-x64/bin/npm"

Answer 4

We had a similar issue with "node not found", trying to run node in container commands. After running ps aux on the EC2 instance we saw that EB has access to the $NODE_HOME env var:

su -s /bin/sh -c PATH=$PATH:$NODE_HOME/bin $EB_NODE_COMMAND 2>&1 nodejs

This can be used in .ebextensions, e.g.:

container_commands:
  your_node_script:
    command: 'env PATH="$PATH:$NODE_HOME/bin" ./bin/your_node_script'

(thanks to Alan Grow)

Answer 5

You can add the most recent node and npm binaries to $PATH with a command like this:

PATH=$PATH:`ls -td /opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-* | head -1`/bin

I couldn't figure out how to prevent beanstalk commands from resetting the $PATH back again.

If you are so inclined you can probably create a symlink with a command similar to the above and use that as your reference point in cron scripts etc.

Agreed, it is very very annoying.