npm throws error without sudo

Question

I just installed node and npm through the package on nodejs.org and whenever I try to search or install something with npm it throws the following error, unless I sudo the c

Answer 1

I had a similar problem at NPM modules won't install globally without sudo, the issue was that when i installed node i did it with sudo via chris/lea ppa repo.

My solution was to uninstall node and then install it this way:

Download latest stable node sources from nodejs.org #in my case node-v0.10.20.tar.gz

tar -zxf node-v0.10.20.tar.gz #uncompress sources

cd node-v0.10.20 #enter uncompressed folder

sudo chown $USER -R /usr/local

./configure --prefix=/usr/local && make && make install

PD: If you don't want to change ownership of the /usr/local folder, you can install it somewhere you already own. The problem of this approach is that you will have to bind the installation folder with the bash command line so that we can use the node command later on

mkdir ~/opt

./configure --prefix=~/opt && make && make install

echo 'export PATH=~/opt/bin:${PATH}' >> ~/.bashrc #or ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshenv depending on the current Operative System

With either of those approaches, you will be able to do the following without using sudo

npm install -g module_to_install