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Introduction

PMDaemon is a high-performance process manager built in Rust, inspired by PM2 with innovative features that exceed the original. It's designed for modern application deployment with advanced port management, real-time monitoring, and production-ready web APIs.

What is PMDaemon?​

PMDaemon is a general-purpose process manager that helps you:

  • Start, stop, restart, and monitor applications
  • Scale applications with clustering and load balancing
  • Manage ports with advanced allocation and conflict detection
  • Monitor health with HTTP and script-based checks
  • Access remotely via REST API and WebSocket connections
  • Persist configurations across system restarts

Key Advantages Over PM2​

PMDaemon isn't just a PM2 clone—it's PM2 evolved with features that the original lacks:

🎯 Advanced Port Management​

  • Port range distribution - Automatically assign consecutive ports to cluster instances
  • Auto-assignment - Find first available port in specified ranges
  • Conflict detection - Prevent port conflicts at the process manager level
  • Runtime overrides - Change ports during restart without modifying saved config

🏥 Health Checks & Blocking Start​

  • HTTP health checks - Monitor endpoints with configurable timeouts
  • Script-based checks - Custom validation logic for complex scenarios
  • Blocking start - Wait for processes to be healthy before returning
  • Auto-restart on failure - Automatic recovery when health checks fail

⚡ Rust Performance​

  • Memory safety - No segfaults or memory leaks
  • Blazing performance - Efficient async/await architecture
  • Low resource usage - Minimal overhead compared to Node.js-based tools

🔧 Enhanced Operations​

  • Bulk deletion - Delete all processes or filter by status
  • Configurable monitoring - Customize update intervals for different needs
  • Professional display - Beautiful tables with color-coded status indicators
  • Real-time log following - tail -f functionality built-in

Architecture Overview​

PMDaemon follows a modern, layered architecture designed for performance, security, and maintainability:

Key architectural features:

  • 🔒 Security-first design with API key authentication
  • ⚡ High-performance async architecture built on Tokio
  • 🏗️ Layered design with clear separation of concerns
  • 🔄 Real-time monitoring with WebSocket support
  • 🌐 Cross-platform compatibility (Linux, Windows, macOS)

📖 For detailed architecture information, see Architecture Overview

Use Cases​

PMDaemon is perfect for:

Development​

  • Running multiple microservices locally
  • Hot-reloading applications during development
  • Managing different environments (dev, staging, prod)

Production​

  • Deploying Node.js, Python, Rust, or any executable
  • Load balancing with automatic clustering
  • Health monitoring and automatic recovery
  • Remote monitoring and management

DevOps & CI/CD​

  • Deployment scripts that wait for services to be ready
  • Automated testing with health check validation
  • Container orchestration and service management

What's Next?​

Ready to get started? Here's your path:

  1. Installation - Install PMDaemon on your system
  2. Quick Start - Get up and running in 5 minutes
  3. Migration from PM2 - Transition from PM2 seamlessly

Or dive deeper into specific features:

Community & Support​

PMDaemon - Process management, evolved. 🚀