如何在不使用gcloud上的deploy.sh文件的情况下为node.js应用程序打开端口80？

Question

I have a node application which runs fine if I manually putty into the gcloud computeVM and run it.

Here are the complications (all realted to unix) :

1.) I have a domain name. So I added the dns zone record to point to the above VM.

2.) For the compute VM to respond, there should be process listening on 80

3.) If we follow the https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/getting-started/run-on-compute-engine#download_app , it specifies to run the app on 8080.

4.) For ports < 1024, it requires root privileges to open up ports.

5.) So from npm start, I changed the start up script to use "sudo npm start"

6.) Then it gave the following error : my-app-instance supervisord: nodeapp sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified

7.) If I have to "sudo visudo" everytime and add the "username ALL = NOPASSWD:" everytime I restart the instance after deployment , its something which I would least prefer.

I have included the relevant portion of the stratup-script for more info :

# Install app dependencies
cd /myrepo/opt/app/servers
sudo npm install

# Create a nodeapp user. The application will run as this user.
useradd -m -d /home/nodeapp nodeapp
chown -R nodeapp:nodeapp /myrepo/opt/app/servers

# Configure supervisor to run the node app.
cat >/etc/supervisor/conf.d/node-app.conf << EOF
[program:nodeapp]
directory=/myrepo/opt/app/servers
command=sudo npm start
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=nodeapp
environment=HOME="/home/nodeapp",USER="nodeapp",NODE_ENV="production"
stdout_logfile=syslog
stderr_logfile=syslog
EOF

A.) My requirement is simple : My google domain points to the above compute VM now. whenever the user types www.domainname.com, it should take him to the website without any port numbers in the url. How to open port 80 with a simple modification of start-up script(preferred) ?

B.) And also if I have to go with deploy.sh specified in the tutorial, will it get executed automatically ? Or if I have to execute it automatically , whats the procedure.

Note : I am not unix expert. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Look into using a reverse proxy . This allows you to run your app without root privileges on a port like 8080, and have a privileged HTTP server (like Apache or Nginx) running on port 80 and proxying traffic to your app. This is common practice, and much more secure than running your app with root privileges.