Deploy Nuxt App in Ubuntu Server

For this, first you need to have a running Ubuntu server and a Nuxt app to build.

Build the Nuxt App

Navigate to your project directory and build the app using the following command

bash

npm run build

bash

┌  Building Nuxt for production...
│
●  Nuxt 4.4.2 (with Nitro 2.13.3, Vite 7.3.1 and Vue 3.5.32)
✔ Processed 2 collections and 0 files in 69.58ms (0 cached, 0 parsed)                                                                                              @nuxt/content 2:46:56 PM
ℹ Nuxt Icon server bundle mode is set to local                                                                                                                                   2:46:57 PM
│
●  Nitro preset: node-server
ℹ Building client...

The build folder will be .output. If you look into the folder, you can see a lot of build files. Inside the server folder, you can see the node_modules as well. This is when you build the app. Nuxt bundles everything your application needs into a standalone package, so you don't have to run npm install it on your server.

Transferring those files to the remote server will take much time, so we need zip them. Use the following command to zip the folder

bash

tar -czf build.tar.gz .output

Now, transfer the file to our Ubuntu server.

bash

scp build.tar.gz user@your-server-ip:~

Now SSH into the remote Ubuntu server

bash

ssh user@your-server-ip

Provide the password if required. Here, user is your Ubuntu server username that might be root or ubuntu

Inside the Ubuntu server, untar the file

bash

tar -xzf build.tar.gz

Install NodeJS on the Server

We need to install the node inside the server. We are using nvm node manager to do so, it's due to get rid of version conflict between the node used to develop locally and the server. First, install the nvm

bash

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.4/install.sh | bash

Now install NodeJS

bash

nvm install v22.17.1

Make sure to use your own node version.

Verify the node is installed

bash

node -v

Install and Set Up Process Manager(PM2)

Install PM2

We are going to manage the process using pm2, which helps to run the application in the background.

bash

npm install -g pm2

Let's create a configuration file for pm2 to manage. Create the file in the same directory where our .output folder is located.

bash

touch ecosystem.config.cjs

Set up the config file

javascript

module.exports = {
  apps: [
    {
      name: 'csbyte',
      port: '3000',
      exec_mode: 'cluster',
      instances: 'max',
      script: './.output/server/index.mjs'
    }
  ]
}

Here, use your own name. You can see the instances are set to max, which will create multiple instances as the user requests increase. When you use Cluster Mode, PM2 acts as a load balancer. Instead of running one single process, it will utilize all available CPU cores on your Ubuntu server.

If your server have 2 core cpu, setting instances max will create one instance per core, resulting in 2 instances.

Start pm2

Simply, start the pm2 using the following command

bash

pm2 start ecosystem.config.cjs

The output looks something like the above, for instance, set to 1.

Now you can open the IP address with port 3000 it will load the app.

http://your-server-ip-address:3000/

Run Node APP in the background

Run the following command to run your node app in the background

bash

pm2 save
pm2 startup

Useful command for PM2

bash

pm2 delete app-name

This will delete the app use app-name as your configured name in ecosystem.config.cjs

bash

pm2 logs

This will list the logs of all the running processes if you have multiple nuxt app setup.

bash

pm2 logs app-name

This will log for a specific Nuxt app.

bash

pm2 logs app-name --lines 100

This will show the older logs, the last 100 lines

bash

pm2 monit

This will show a more visual way to monitor logs alongside CPU and RAM usage

If your logs are getting too cluttered and you want to wipe them to start fresh

bash

pm2 flush

All these logs are located inside these locations.

Output console logs:

bash

~/.pm2/logs/app-name-out.log

Errors logs:

bash

~/.pm2/logs/app-name-error.log

This is the process to deploy our Nuxt application.