Cannot install packages using node package manager

Question

NodeJS interpreter name(node) on Ubuntu has been renamed to nodejs because of name conflict with another package. Here's what the readme.debian says:

The upstream name for the Node.js interpreter command is "node". In Debian the interpreter command has been changed to "nodejs".

This was done to prevent a namespace collision: other commands use the same name in their upstreams, such as ax25-node from the "node" package.

Scripts calling Node.js as a shell command must be changed to instead use the "nodejs" command.

However, using nodejs mucks up installing packages using npm. Package installation fails with the following error:

sh: 1: node: not found
npm WARN This failure might be due to the use of legacy binary "node"
npm WARN For further explanations, please read /usr/share/doc/nodejs/README.Debian

How do I make npm understand that nodejs is already installed on the system but the interpreter name is different?

Answer 1

As other folks already mention, I will suggest not to use "sudo apt-get" to install node or any development library. You can download required version from https://nodejs.org/dist/v6.9.2/ and setup you own environment.

I will recommend tools like nvm and n, to manage you node version. It is very convenient to switch and work with these modules. https://github.com/creationix/nvm https://github.com/tj/n

Or write basic bash to download zip/tar, extract move folder and create a soft link. Whenever you need to update, just point the old soft link to new downloaded version. Like I have created for my own, you can refer: https://github.com/deepakshrma/NodeJs-4.0-Reference-Guide/blob/master/nodejs-installer.sh

#Go to home
cd ~
#run command
#New Script
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/deepakshrma/NodeJs-4.0-Reference-Guide/master/nodejs-installer.sh 
bash nodejs-installer.sh -v lts
#here -v or --version can be sepecific to 0.10.37 or it could be latest/lts 
#Examples
bash nodejs-installer.sh -v lts
bash nodejs-installer.sh -v latest
bash nodejs-installer.sh -v 4.4.2

Answer 2

Your System is not able to detect the path node js binary.

1.which node

2.Then soft link node to nodejs

ln -s [the path of nodejs] /usr/bin/node 

I am assuming /usr/bin is in your execution path. Then you can test by typing node or npm into your command line, and everything should work now.

Answer 3

you can create a link ln -s nodejs node in /usr/bin hope this solves your problem.

Answer 4

Problem is not in installer
replace nodejs with node or change the path from /usr/bin/nodejs to /usr/bin/node

Answer 5

You can also install Nodejs using NVM or Nodejs Version Manager There are a lot of benefits to using a version manager. One of them being you don't have to worry about this issue.

Instructions:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev

Once the prerequisite packages are installed, you can pull down the nvm installation script from the project's GitHub page. The version number may be different, but in general, you can download and install it with the following syntax:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.16.1/install.sh | sh

This will download the script and run it. It will install the software into a subdirectory of your home directory at ~/.nvm. It will also add the necessary lines to your ~/.profile file to use the file.

To gain access to the nvm functionality, you'll need to log out and log back in again, or you can source the ~/.profile file so that your current session knows about the changes:

source ~/.profile

Now that you have nvm installed, you can install isolated Node.js versions.

To find out the versions of Node.js that are available for installation, you can type:

nvm ls-remote
. . .

v0.11.10
v0.11.11
v0.11.12
v0.11.13
v0.11.14

As you can see, the newest version at the time of this writing is v0.11.14. You can install that by typing:

nvm install 0.11.14

Usually, nvm will switch to use the most recently installed version. You can explicitly tell nvm to use the version we just downloaded by typing:

nvm use 0.11.14

When you install Node.js using nvm, the executable is called node. You can see the version currently being used by the shell by typing:

node -v

The comeplete tutorial can be found here

Answer 6

Uninstall whatever node version you have

sudo apt-get --purge remove node
sudo apt-get --purge remove nodejs-legacy
sudo apt-get --purge remove nodejs

install nvm (Node Version Manager) https://github.com/creationix/nvm

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.31.0/install.sh | bash

Now you can install whatever version of node you want and switch between the versions.