“npm install” on Elastic Beanstalk fails unless ma

I've got an Elastic Beanstalk environment with a PHP application. I'd like to just run npm install after my application has been deployed.

node and npm are both installed on the server via deploy configs. I've defined a container command to simply cd into the proper directory and then run npm install, but it always fails with the same errors.

If I manually execute npm install, everything gets installed perfectly.

How can I go about debugging this?

deploy.config

commands:
    01_mkdir_webapp_dir:
      # use the test directive to create the directory
      # if the mkdir command fails the rest of this directive is ignored
      test: 'mkdir /home/webapp'
      command: 'ls -la /home/webapp'
    02_chown_webapp_dir:
      command: 'chown webapp:webapp /home/webapp'
    03_chmod_webapp_dir:
      command: 'chmod 700 /home/webapp'
    04_node_install:
        cwd: /tmp
        test: '[ ! -f /usr/bin/node ] && echo "node not installed"'
        command: 'yum install -y nodejs --enablerepo=epel'
    05_npm_install:
        cwd: /tmp
        test: '[ ! -f /usr/bin/npm ] && echo "npm not installed"'
        command: 'curl -L http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh'
    06_node_update:
        cwd: /tmp
        test: '[ ! -f /usr/bin/n ] && echo "node not updated"'
        command: 'npm install -g n && n stable'

# These commands will be run just before the application is started
container_commands:
    01_npm_build:
        cwd: '/var/app/ondeck/wp-content/themes/gift-certificates'
        command: 'npm install && npm run build'

tail of npm-debug.log

...

90557 silly lifecycle gifsicle@3.0.4~install: no script for install, continuing
90558 silly install imagemin-gifsicle@4.2.0 /var/app/ondeck/wp-content/themes/gift-certificates/node_modules/.staging/imagemin-gifsicle-836840bb
90559 info lifecycle imagemin-gifsicle@4.2.0~install: imagemin-gifsicle@4.2.0
90560 silly lifecycle imagemin-gifsicle@4.2.0~install: no script for install, continuing
90561 silly install jpegtran-bin@3.1.0 /var/app/ondeck/wp-content/themes/gift-certificates/node_modules/.staging/jpegtran-bin-6b358de8
90562 info lifecycle jpegtran-bin@3.1.0~install: jpegtran-bin@3.1.0
90563 silly rollbackFailedOptional Finishing
90564 silly runTopLevelLifecycles Starting
90565 silly runTopLevelLifecycles Finishing
90566 silly install printInstalled
90567 warn optional Skipping failed optional dependency /chokidar/fsevents:
90568 warn notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: fsevents@1.0.14
90569 verbose stack Error: node-sass@3.10.0 install: `node scripts/install.js`
90569 verbose stack spawn ENOENT
90569 verbose stack     at errnoException (child_process.js:1011:11)
90569 verbose stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:802:34)
90570 verbose pkgid node-sass@3.10.0
90571 verbose cwd /var/app/ondeck/wp-content/themes/gift-certificates
90572 error Linux 4.4.15-25.57.amzn1.x86_64
90573 error argv "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install"
90574 error node v6.6.0
90575 error npm  v3.10.3
90576 error file sh
90577 error code ELIFECYCLE
90578 error errno ENOENT
90579 error syscall spawn
90580 error node-sass@3.10.0 install: `node scripts/install.js`
90580 error spawn ENOENT
90581 error Failed at the node-sass@3.10.0 install script 'node scripts/install.js'.
90581 error Make sure you have the latest version of node.js and npm installed.
90581 error If you do, this is most likely a problem with the node-sass package,
90581 error not with npm itself.
90581 error Tell the author that this fails on your system:
90581 error     node scripts/install.js
90581 error You can get information on how to open an issue for this project with:
90581 error     npm bugs node-sass
90581 error Or if that isn't available, you can get their info via:
90581 error     npm owner ls node-sass
90581 error There is likely additional logging output above.
90582 verbose exit [ 1, true ]

tail of eb-commandprocessor.log

  ...

  | `-- osenv@0.0.3
  +-- chalk@0.5.1
  | +-- ansi-styles@1.1.0
  | +-- has-ansi@0.1.0
  | | `-- ansi-regex@0.2.1
  | +-- strip-ansi@0.3.0
  | `-- supports-color@0.2.0
  +-- glob@4.5.3
  | +-- inflight@1.0.5
  | | `-- wrappy@1.0.2
  | `-- once@1.4.0
  +-- lodash@2.4.2
  +-- propprop@0.3.1
  `-- through2@0.6.5
  `-- readable-stream@1.0.34
  `-- isarray@0.0.1

  npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /chokidar/fsevents:
  npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: fsevents@1.0.14
  npm ERR! Linux 4.4.15-25.57.amzn1.x86_64
  npm ERR! argv "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install"
  npm ERR! node v6.6.0
  npm ERR! npm  v3.10.3

  npm ERR! Callback called more than once.
  npm ERR!
  npm ERR! If you need help, you may report this error at:
  npm ERR!     <https://github.com/npm/npm/issues>

  npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
  npm ERR!     /var/app/ondeck/wp-content/themes/gift-certificates/npm-debug.log
   (ElasticBeanstalk::ExternalInvocationError)


[2016-09-20T17:38:57.831Z] ERROR [4286]  : Command CMD-AppDeploy failed!
[2016-09-20T17:38:57.837Z] INFO  [4286]  : Command processor returning results:
{"status":"FAILURE","api_version":"1.0","results":[{"status":"FAILURE","msg":"(TRUNCATED)...\nnpm ERR! If you need help, you may report this error at:\nnpm ERR!     <https://github.com/npm/npm/issues>\n\nnpm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:\nnpm ERR!     /var/app/ondeck/wp-content/themes/gift-certificates/npm-debug.log. \ncontainer_command 01_npm_build in .ebextensions/deploy.config failed. For more detail, check /var/log/eb-activity.log using console or EB CLI","returncode":1,"events":[]}],"truncated":"true"}

For anyone else experiencing this issue on a PHP Elastic Beanstalk instance, here's what helped me get through this:

1) If you're running on an Amazon Linux instance, doing a yum install nodejs will give you a super old version that will most likely be incompatible with a number of things. I had to add a script to my .ebextensions dir and execute it from one of my configs to install an updated version of nodejs. Here is a copy of that script:

#!/bin/bash

hash_file="/tmp/nodejshash"

check_if_npm_packages_has_to_be_installed () {
    if [ -f $hash_file ]; then
        check_if_same_hash
    else
        return 0
    fi
}

check_if_same_hash () {
    hash_new="$(md5sum .ebextensions/bin/install-nodejs.sh 2> /dev/null | cut -d ' ' -f 1)"
    hash_current="$(cat "$hash_file" 2> /dev/null | cut -d ' ' -f 1)"

    if [ $hash_new == $hash_current ]; then
        return 1
    else
        return 0
    fi
}

install_node () {
    if hash nodejs 2> /dev/null; then
        echo 'nodejs install, add more processing if needed' > /dev/null
    else
        curl -sL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | bash -
        yum install -y nodejs
    fi
}

install_npm_packages () {
    npm install -g bower
    npm install -g gulp
}

update_current_hash () {
    echo $hash_new > $hash_file
}

install_node

if check_if_npm_packages_has_to_be_installed; then
    install_npm_packages
    update_current_hash
fi

2) If you're on a micro instance by default, the node-sass package was taking a very long time to build and eventually timed out. I increased my instance size to a t2.small to get past this.

Hope this helps someone else out.