npm ERR! Refusing to delete / code EEXIST

Question

I'm just running a simple npm install and i get this error.

npm ERR! path /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which
npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! Refusing to delete /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which: is outside /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/which and not a link
npm ERR! File exists: /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which
npm ERR! Move it away, and try again

This is the first time I get this error and I don't know what to do.

I also saw this issue when I was hosting a project in a folder that was being synced with Google File Stream. After I moved the project to a "local disk" I was able to run `npm install` — Trevor, Jan 03 '20 at 22:36

antzshrek · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-06T06:45:09.130

204

Steps

Delete the node_modules directory completely.
Run npm install again.

This should help.

edited Jan 06 '20 at 06:45

answered Oct 03 '17 at 09:45

antzshrek

9,276
5
26
43

2

This failed to install after doing this, with missing npm-cli.js. I ended up doing the rename solution below along with removing npx files – David Bradley Mar 26 '20 at 19:33
1

this works, yes, but deletion and installation take a long time. this solution is not optimal. – jasie Jul 06 '20 at 10:52
4

Now I get "Cannot find module C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\npm-cli.js' – David Klempfner Jul 09 '20 at 04:57
1

@DavidKlempfner you might want to check this other SO answer https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24721903/npm-cli-js-not-found-when-running-npm – antzshrek Jul 09 '20 at 07:16
1

deleting node_modules will be faster through the command line: rmdir /s /q node_modules – Mike T Mar 03 '21 at 18:46

score 45 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 26 '18 at 00:13

45

This was how I solved mine after 'googling' around...

Navigate to the directory your node was installed in
rename your npm.cmd and npm files
Try run the installation again
If successful..delete the files you renamed earlier npm and npm.cmd
if not, :( :(

The cli commands here...in case you don't want to be renaming and stuffs

cd %ProgramFiles%\nodejs
ren npm.cmd npm2.cmd
ren npm npm2 
npm2 install npm@latest -g

del npm2
del npm2.cmd

Rolf-schmidiger

edited Dec 26 '18 at 00:13

antzshrek

9,276
5
26
43

answered Aug 01 '18 at 09:09

yemiOdetola

569
4
13

10

This answer worked for me, but also I had to rename npx.cmd and npx to npx2.cmd and npx2. I also had to run the terminal as administrator. – sigmaxf Feb 15 '19 at 18:20
7

This worked for me, too. Had to rename npx and npx.cmd as well as npm and npm.cmd. I then did "npm_ update -g npm" and it worked. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact, that I did not install nodejs via an Installer, but rather extracted it from a zip-file instead. – Igor Mar 08 '19 at 16:31
1

also need to rename npx.cmd – Reza Oct 18 '19 at 19:12
2

I deleted the npx files instead of renaming them that worked, new ones were created. – David Bradley Mar 26 '20 at 19:32
Now I get 'npm' is not recognized as an internal or external command. – David Klempfner Jul 09 '20 at 04:53
1

@DavidKlempfner check this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20992723/npm-is-not-recognized-as-internal-or-external-command-operable-program-or-bat – yemiOdetola Jul 14 '20 at 03:46
2

This worked for me too. @DavidKlempfner run the command using npm2 now that it's renamed. After that I ran into an issue about Refusing to delete `...\npm\node_modules\*\node_modules\.bin\* I just manually deleted the .bin folders every time it complained (like twice or 3 times) and it worked. – Zakk Diaz Aug 04 '20 at 00:19
1

just a question... what happens when u reach step #5... thankfully I was not there, but still... I expect to be there by the standards of modern JS – Idra Aug 09 '21 at 21:41

OArnarsson · Answer 3 · 2017-10-03T10:00:06.057

9

Try running npm update -g npm then run npm i again.
If that doesn't work maybe npm cache clean helps.

If that doesn't work either you should consider removing the node_modules folder in your application and running npm i again.
If you still have no luck, I suggest removing the package-lock.json and the node_modules folder before running npm i.

edited Oct 03 '17 at 10:00

answered Oct 03 '17 at 09:38

OArnarsson

801
1
9
25

2

@AzoulayJason I just realized. If you are using the newest verison of the angular CLI it is highly recommended to use `yarn` instead of `npm i`. There is some sort of bug related to npm in the latest version. Hope it helps! – OArnarsson Oct 03 '17 at 10:05
1

As of npm@5, the npm cache self-heals from corruption issues and data extracted from the cache is guaranteed to be valid. If you want to make sure everything is consistent, use 'npm cache verify' instead. – Ruan Nov 05 '20 at 12:52

score 6 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 29 '23 at 18:51

6

For Windows users (specific to Windows 10) this must solve the problem.

Goto this folder:

C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\

delete or rename the npm and npm-cache folders.

This has fixed my problem in Windows.

Reinstall the node js with this command and it works fine.

npm install -g npm

edited Jul 29 '23 at 18:51

Kranthi Kumar

3,664
1
7
9

answered Aug 25 '20 at 10:57

nimodka

143
1
9

score 4 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 20 '18 at 06:34

I got this problem on Linux (npm is the current latest 5.6.0), because I created a tgz archive, and I needed to --dereference some symlinks (see man tar) when creating a tgz archive (which was them copied to VM for testing). This way a lot of symlinks in node_modules/.bin also became regular files. npm says in the error message, .e.g.

npm ERR! Refusing to delete /path/to/node_modules/.bin/jest: is outside /path/to/node_modules/jest and not a link

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 10 '20 at 10:19

4

This worked for me

npm install -g --force gatsby-cli

Thanks

answered Jul 10 '20 at 10:19

Dhinesh

105
1
5

score 4 · Answer 7 · edited Feb 03 '22 at 21:24

4

I had a similar issue but was because initially the project was installed with

yarn install

Then when I tried to install dependencies using

npm install

I caught this same error. So ensure to use only one: yarn or npm. I fixed it by adding my dependency with

yarn add <vendor_name>

but the same works if you use npm instead, you need to add a dependency.

edited Feb 03 '22 at 21:24

questionto42

7,175
4
57
90

answered May 17 '21 at 09:38

Andrés Mejía

61
2

score 3 · Answer 8 · edited Jun 11 '20 at 08:37

3

Uninstall node.js from control panel
Delete below folders

C:\Program Files (x86)\Nodejs
C:\Program Files\Nodejs
C:\Users\{User}\AppData\Roaming\npm (or %appdata%\npm)
C:\Users\{User}\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache (or %appdata%\npm-cache)
C:\Users\{User}\.npmrc (and possibly check for that without the . prefix too)
C:\Users\{User}\AppData\Local\Temp\npm-*

Install node.js again

edited Jun 11 '20 at 08:37

Mihail Duchev

4,691
10
25
32

answered Jun 11 '20 at 07:53

Sezayir Dagtekin

31
1

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 04 '18 at 06:42

1

I had a similar error(mine is not @angular),
resolved by deleting and reinstalling node with installer.

answered Sep 04 '18 at 06:42

userA789

425
2
6
17

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 19 '18 at 21:22

I had the same problem and it turned out the problem was that a stray instance of npm was running somewhere in the background at the same time I was trying to do the install (it was Webpack's npm run serve, to be precise).

Stopping the running instance resolved the problem.

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 08 '20 at 19:38

I had a similar problem and what seems to have worked is to uninstall npm and reinstall it, making sure to be logged in as the correct user for the reinstall. I think I previously installed npm as root, but was updating a package as a regular (sudo) user.

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Apr 30 '20 at 16:56

1

I had this problem when working on a virtual, encrypted disk. Moving the project to a regular disk solved the problem.

answered Apr 30 '20 at 16:56

Kjeld

444
4
14

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Jun 16 '20 at 12:58

1

I the same error but when I was trying to update module "cordova" to version 9. I fixed it by forcing the install with --force. The npm command I used:

npm i -g --force cordova@9

answered Jun 16 '20 at 12:58

Alberto

1,423
18
32

score 1 · Answer 14 · answered Aug 14 '21 at 12:28

1

I downgraded my node version to 10 with nvm, and it installed a newer version of npm (v6) during the process. After that, the package was installed w/o errors. So it's either npm or node version.

answered Aug 14 '21 at 12:28

ulu

5,872
4
42
51

score 1 · Answer 15 · answered Feb 03 '22 at 21:15

In my case, when trying to install for example the program mermaid-cli, and with npm being already installed,

npm install @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli

threw the error in question.

When I added --force, the output was just shortened, but the same error:

$ sudo npm install @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli --force
npm WARN using --force I sure hope you know what you are doing.
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm WARN MY_USER No description
npm WARN MY_USER No repository field.
npm WARN MY_USER No README data
npm WARN MY_USER No license field.

npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! path /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/.bin/rimraf
npm ERR! Refusing to delete /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/.bin/rimraf: is outside /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/rimraf and not a link
npm ERR! File exists: /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/.bin/rimraf
npm ERR! Remove the existing file and try again, or run npm
npm ERR! with --force to overwrite files recklessly.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /root/.npm/_logs/2022-02-03T13_41_52_634Z-debug.log

I then followed the accepted answer that says that you only need to remove and install npm again and therefore removed the directory node_modules from my home directory where it was installed.

Yet, I still ran into the error when running npm install:

$npm install
npm WARN saveError ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm WARN MY_USER No description
npm WARN MY_USER No repository field.
npm WARN MY_USER No README data
npm WARN MY_USER No license field.

up to date in 0.865s
found 0 vulnerabilities

The easy fix for this was to just install the program with npm again when npm 'node_modules are removed! I happened to find out about by entering the command although npm's node_modules were removed. Ran through.

Logs:

$npm install @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli

> puppeteer@13.1.3 install /home/MY_USER/node_modules/puppeteer
> node install.js

Downloading Chromium r950341 - 142 Mb [====================] 100% 0.0s 
Chromium (950341) downloaded to /home/MY_USER/node_modules/puppeteer/.local-chromium/linux-950341
npm WARN saveError ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm WARN notsup Unsupported engine for commander@8.3.0: wanted: {"node":">= 12"} (current: {"node":"10.19.0","npm":"6.14.4"})
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your version of node/npm: commander@8.3.0
...
npm WARN MY_USER No description
npm WARN MY_USER No repository field.
npm WARN MY_USER No README data
npm WARN MY_USER No license field.

+ @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli@8.13.10
added 147 packages from 94 contributors and audited 147 packages in 26.338s

10 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

found 0 vulnerabilities

Wrap up:

If npm install fails, install whatever program you like or dislike, but install one program with the npm command even if you just have removed npm's node_modules directory. It will download the node_modules again and in my case, the program worked.

score 0 · Answer 16 · edited Apr 08 '23 at 11:30

0

--force helped to solve it:

npm install -g --force node@^16.10.0

edited Apr 08 '23 at 11:30

Tyler2P

2,324
26
22
31

answered Apr 08 '23 at 06:43

jsduniya

2,464
7
30
45

npm ERR! Refusing to delete / code EEXIST

16 Answers16

Steps

Wrap up:

Linked