Unable to install Grunt through Terminal

Question

Operating System: Mac

So I was trying to install Grunt by typing the following into my terminal (through /usr/local/bin):

npm install -g grunt-cli

But I get this as a result:

Error: EACCES, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli'
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli']
npm ERR!   errno: 3,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli',
npm ERR!   fstream_type: 'Directory',
npm ERR!   fstream_path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli',
npm ERR!   fstream_class: 'DirWriter',
npm ERR!   fstream_stack: 
npm ERR!    [ '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/fstream/lib/dir-writer.js:36:23',
npm ERR!      '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp/index.js:46:53',
npm ERR!      'Object.oncomplete (fs.js:107:15)' ] }
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! System Darwin 13.4.0
npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install" "-g" "grunt-cli"
npm ERR! cwd /usr/local/bin
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.32
npm ERR! npm -v 1.4.28
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli
npm ERR! fstream_path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli
npm ERR! fstream_type Directory
npm ERR! fstream_class DirWriter
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno 3
npm ERR! stack Error: EACCES, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli'
npm ERR! fstream_stack /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/fstream/lib/dir-writer.js:36:23
npm ERR! fstream_stack /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp/index.js:46:53
npm ERR! fstream_stack Object.oncomplete (fs.js:107:15)
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /usr/local/bin/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0

...and that doesn't look too happy! Can anyone help me out here?

Note: I also initially tried doing it from just my usr, without the /local/bin but that came up with errors too.

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

I get the same result (OSX 10.9.5). It likely doesn't matter where you're running the command from - I'd expect you'd see the exact same paths erroring out.

The problem appears to be that npm wants to put globally installed packages under /usr/local/ (per https://www.npmjs.org/doc/files/npm-folders.html, executables in /usr/local/bin and modules in /usr/local/lib/node_modules on *NIX systems, which here includes OSX). This is not writable to your user on a Mac.

Your options are probably a few:

You could installing local to your project instead of globally (omit the -g). This would mean you need to reinstall the package in other project in which you want to use it. This also means you'll need to set up your PATH when you access the project to point to any binaries (e.g., grunt) under the project (export PATH=$PATH:./node_modules/bin), which you could do with a script, but may still be annoying.

You can also likely run the install again with sudo, but there are some risks there (pointed out in https://stackoverflow.com/a/25259232/1795230).

Finally, you can change the 'prefix' (via npm config set prefix ~/npm), as presented here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21712034/1795230. This has the downside of not being "global" for real (just global to all the projects of your user) as pointed out in comment NPM won't install any package on Mac. New, clean build. `EACCES` & other errors, but that may work out fine, depending on your situation (works for me on my local dev machine).

Unable to install Grunt through Terminal

1 Answers1