Trying to get nginx-passenger to use asdf installed nodejs rather than system wide install

Question

I am using asdf to install ruby for a rails app. I am using nginx and passenger to serve the pages. Passenger recognizes the asdf installation of ruby, but not nodejs.

$ which node
/home/site/.asdf/shims/node
$ which ruby
/home/siite/.asdf/shims/ruby

excerpt from /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite.com

    passenger_enabled on;
    passenger_ruby /home/site/.asdf/shims/ruby;
    passenger_nodejs /home/site/.asdf/shims/node;
    rails_env production;

But when I try to boot the server, I get this error:

App 18654 output: Error: The application encountered the following error: Could not find a JavaScript runtime. See https://github.com/rails/execjs for a list of available runtimes. (ExecJS::RuntimeUnavailable)

When I install nodejs with sudo apt-get install nodejs, everything works.

How can I use the asdf installation of nodejs to work with passenger in this fashion?

Answer 1

Clearly this has something to do with paths, naming or otherwise. Rather than figuring out an elaborate way to solve this, I created a symlink in /usr/local/bin

ln -s /home/site/.asdf/shims/node /usr/local/bin/nodejs

Now which nodejs works, and the server boots.