While posting this question I figured out the answer, but I'll post both here in case it helps someone else, and perhaps someone can help with the why of what happened.
When I run:
sudo npm install -g grunt
the last part of it says:
/usr/bin/grunt -> /usr/lib/node_modules/grunt/bin/grunt
npm ERR! peerinvalid The package flatiron does not satisfy its siblings' peerDependencies requirements!
npm ERR! peerinvalid Peer flatiron-cli-config@0.1.3 wants flatiron@~0.1.9
npm ERR! peerinvalid Peer flatiron-cli-users@0.1.1 wants flatiron@~0.1.9
npm ERR! System Linux 3.5.0-23-generic
npm ERR! command "nodejs" "/usr/bin/npm" "install" "-g" "grunt"
npm ERR! cwd /home/explunit
npm ERR! node -v v0.8.19
npm ERR! npm -v 1.2.9
npm ERR! code EPEERINVALID
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR! /home/explunit/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0
As you can see in the above, I am on node 0.8.19 and npm 1.2.9 (the latest that comes down from ppa:chris-lea on Ubuntu 12.10).
Other things I tried:
- Did the same on a fresh Ubuntu install. No errors. The script output looks the same until those last few error lines.
- Ran "sudo npm cache clean" and tried again. No luck.
- Ran "npm list" and there was nothing else listed