bash doesn't load node on remote ssh command

I think the problem is the misinterpretation that the shell executing node has a full environment like an interactive ssh session does. Most likely this is not the case.

When a SSH session spawns a shell it goes through a lot of gyrations to build an environment suitable to work with interactively. Things like inheriting from the login process, reading /etc/profile, reading ~/.profile. But in the cases where your executing bash directly this isn't always guaranteed. In fact the $PATH might be completely empty.

When /usr/bin/env node executes it looks for node in your $PATH which in a non-interactive shell could be anything or empty.

Most systems have a default PATH=/bin:/usr/bin typically /usr/local/bin is not included in the default environment.

You could attempt to force a login with ssh using ssh … '/bin/bash -l -c "…"'.

You can also write a specialized script on the server that knows how the environment should be when executed outside of an interactive shell:

#!/bin/bash
# Example shell script; filename: /usr/local/bin/my_script.sh
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
export NODE_PATH=/usr/local/share/node
export USER=myuser
export HOME=/home/myuser
source $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh
cd /usr/bin/share/my_script
nvm use 0.12
/usr/bin/env node ./script_name.js

Then call it through ssh: ssh … '/usr/local/bin/my_script.sh'.

Beyond these ideas I don't see how to help further.

Like Sukima said, the likelihood is that this is due to an environment issue - SSH'ing into a server does not set up a full environment. You can, however, get around much of this by simply calling /etc/profile yourself at the start of your command using the . operator (which is the same as the "source" command):

ssh [email protected] '. /etc/profile ; cd project; pm2 restart app.js -x -- --prod'

/etc/profile should itself be set up to call the .bashrc of the relevant user, which is why I have removed that part. I used to have to do this quite a lot for quick proof-of-concept scripts at a previous workplace. I don't know if it would be considered a nasty hack for a more permanent script, but it certainly works, and would require minimal modification to your existing script should that be an issue.

Try:

ssh [email protected] 'bash -l -c "source /home/pi/.bashrc; cd project; pm2 restart app.js -x -- --prod"'