node dotenv won’t work with pm2

August 26, 2023 by Tarik

dotenv will read .env file located in the current directory.

When you call pm2 start myapp/app.js it won’t search for myapp/.env.

.env // It will try to load this, which doesn't exist
myapp/
   app.js

So you have two solutions

use path option:

const path = require('path'); 
require('dotenv').config({ path: path.join(__dirname, '.env') });

Or call your script from inside myapp/

pm2 start app.js