Executing npm install in user data

Question

I am attempting to create a launch template in aws with the following in the user data

#!/bin/bash
home=/home/ec2-user
nodev='8.11.2'
nvmv='0.33.11'

#install node
su - ec2-user -c "curl 
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v${nvmv}/install.sh | bash"
su - ec2-user -c "nvm install ${nodev}"
su - ec2-user -c "nvm use ${nodev}"

# install git
yum install git -y

#clone the code
cd /home/ec2-user
su - ec2-user -c "git clone https://github.com/xyz/xdf.git"
cd /home/ec2-user/xdf

#install dependencies
su - ec2-user -c "npm install"
echo "test" > test.txt

#install pm2
su - ec2-user -c "npm install pm2 -g"

#run the server
su - ec2-user -c "pm2 run index.js"

The script is being executed and the repo is cloned but the npm install command is running on the dir /home/ec2-user rather than on /home/ec2-user/xdf. The test.txt is created in the correct place ie inside /home/ec2-user/xdf. How do I get npm install to run on /home/ec2-user/xdf. I tried just running npm install instead of su - ec2-user -c "npm install", but it still giving the same results.

Answer 1

First of all userdata is running with root user permissions so you don't need to have sudo or su there. In case you want ec2-user to be owner of that dir so simply execute chown ec2-user:ec2-user /path/to/dir

Next, when you run su - ec2-user -c ... it is executed in /home/ec2-user dir and cd /home/ec2-user/xdf is not working here. Simply remove all su from your script