How do I debug “Error: spawn ENOENT” on node.js?

Question

When I get the following error:

events.js:72
        throw er; // Unhandled \'error\' event
              ^
Error: spawn ENOENT
    at errnoException (chil         


        

Answer 1

For ENOENT on Windows, https://github.com/nodejs/node-v0.x-archive/issues/2318#issuecomment-249355505 fix it.

e.g. replace spawn('npm', ['-v'], {stdio: 'inherit'}) with:

• for all node.js version:

  spawn(/^win/.test(process.platform) ? 'npm.cmd' : 'npm', ['-v'], {stdio: 'inherit'})
  

• for node.js 5.x and later:

  spawn('npm', ['-v'], {stdio: 'inherit', shell: true})
  

Answer 2

Before anyone spends to much time debugging this problem, most of the time it can be resolved by deleting node_modules and reinstalling the packages.

To Install:

If a lockfile exists you might use

yarn install --frozen-lockfile

or

npm ci

respectivly. if not then

yarn install

or

npm i

Answer 3

In case you're experiencing this issue with an application whose source you cannot modify consider invoking it with the environment variable NODE_DEBUG set to child_process, e.g. NODE_DEBUG=child_process yarn test. This will provide you with information which command lines have been invoked in which directory and usually the last detail is the reason for the failure.

Answer 4

In my case removing node, delete all AppData/Roaming/npm and AppData/Roaming/npm-cache and installing node once again solve the issue.

Answer 5

If you're on Windows Node.js does some funny business when handling quotes that may result in you issuing a command that you know works from the console, but does not when run in Node. For example the following should work:

spawn('ping', ['"8.8.8.8"'], {});

but fails. There's a fantastically undocumented option windowsVerbatimArguments for handling quotes/similar that seems to do the trick, just be sure to add the following to your opts object:

const opts = {
    windowsVerbatimArguments: true
};

and your command should be back in business.

 spawn('ping', ['"8.8.8.8"'], { windowsVerbatimArguments: true });

Answer 6

In my case, I was getting this error thrown due to the necessary dependent system resources not being installed.

More specifically, I have a NodeJS app that is utilizing ImageMagick. Despite having the npm package installed, the core Linux ImageMagick was not installed. I did an apt-get to install ImageMagick and after that all worked great!