Node.js : NPM Install Fails

Question

I get this error if I run

curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

even with sudo.

    cirk@cirk-Parallels-Virtual-Platform:~$ curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  3902  100  3902    0     0   6138      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 12546
fetching: http://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.0.18.tgz
0.4.9
1.0.18
Skipping 0.x cruft clean
! [ -d .git ] || git submodule update --init --recursive
node cli.js cache clean
node cli.js rm npm -g -f --loglevel error
node cli.js install -g -f
npm ERR! error installing npm@1.0.18 Error: EACCES, Permission denied '../lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm.js'
npm ERR! Error: EACCES, Permission denied '../lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm.js'
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Please use 'sudo' or log in as root to run this command.
npm ERR! 
npm ERR!     sudo npm "install" "-g" "-f"
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! or set the 'unsafe-perm' config var to true.
npm ERR! 
npm ERR!     npm config set unsafe-perm true
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! System Linux 2.6.38-10-generic
npm ERR! command "node" "/tmp/npm.1568/package/cli.js" "install" "-g" "-f"
npm ERR! cwd /tmp/npm.1568/package
npm ERR! node -v v0.4.9
npm ERR! npm -v 1.0.18
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /tmp/npm.1568/package/npm-debug.log
npm not ok
It worked

What should I do? I tried these with no success:

chown -R cirk /usr/lib/nodejs
// and also this
chown -R cirk /usr/lib/node_modules (node_modules is empty it tries to install NPM here or what)

actually it did something, as you can see it writes at the end It worked what is a big lie!

Answer 1

Why are you running that in /usr?

If you really need to, this page suggests you may run that as root, so that would be:

curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh

But you better make sure it won't break your system, before running that.

Answer 2

I screwed up the permissions on my npm installation, and had this error when reinstalling. I solved it in the crudest way: by liberally sudo rm -rfing any directory tree that gave me trouble, then recompiling node.js and reinstalling npm.

If all else fails, you could fall back to that.