NPM cannot install dependencies - Attempt to unlock something which hasn't been locked

Question

I\'ve been trying to run an npm install on my package.json file, but I\'m having a lot of trouble. It keeps saying \"Error: Attempt to unlock XXX, which hasn\'t been locke

Answer 1

The following command should fix permission issues:

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

You can read about another officially recommended solutions here:

https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions

Answer 2

In my case the issue was invoking npm with a user that does not have a HOME directory, so for example the following command would fail:

sudo -u someUser npm install

The solution is to provide a HOME directory, where someUser has write access:

sudo -u someUser HOME=/some/directory npm install

Answer 3

My solution:

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/lib/node_modules/NAMEOFMODULE

in my case was :

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/

But I was getting the same problem, finally after

npm cache clean

it worked !