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

What to me seems like the best option is the one suggested in the npm documentation, which is to first check where global node_modules are installed by default by running npm config get prefix. If you get, like I do on Trusty, /usr, you might want to change it to a folder that you can safely own without messing things up the way I did.

To do that, choose or create a new folder in your system. You may want to have it in your home directory or, like me, under /usr/local for consistency because I'm also a Mac user (I prefer not to need to look into different places depending on the machine I happen to be in front of). Another good reason to do that is the fact that the /usr/local folder is probably already in your PATH (unless you like to mess around with your PATH) but chances are your newly-created folder isn't and you'd need to add it to the PATH yourself on your .bash-profile or .bashrc file.

Long story short, I changed the default location of the global modules with npm config set prefix '/usr/local', created the folder /usr/local/lib/node_modules (it will be used by npm) and changed permissions for the folders used by npm with the command:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(npm config get prefix)/{lib/node_modules,bin,share}

Now you can globally install any module safely. Hope this helps!