NPM Doctor

Do you have trouble installing modules from NPM without using sudo? Are you able to update some modules without using sudo, and others still require it?

what, no sudo?

I strongly encourage you not to do package management with sudo! Packages can run arbitrary scripts, which makes sudoing a package manager command as safe as a chainsaw haircut. Sure, it's fast and definitely going to cut through any obstacles, but you might actually want that obstacle to stay there.

Introduction to NPM -- Isaac Z. Schlueter

Fixes

There are couple common problems with npm_modules directory. This tool tries to adress a few of them.

• Sets your node_modules directory to 755, drwxr-xr-x.
• Sets the correct user:group ownership permissions on the files within your node_modules directory.

Running

sudo npm install -g npmdoctor

Then, and yes, you need sudo to correctly fix the permissions.

sudo npmdoctor -u {YOURUSERNAME}

Make sure to replace {YOURUSERNAME} with your actual user name. If you're unsure, you can find this out with whoami.