node.js - How to install node binary distribution files on Linux

Question

My production server (Centos 5.9) won't compile nodejs, possibly because it's gcc is only 4.1.2 (4.2 or above is recommended) so I've trying to install the binaries.

$ wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.22/node-v0.10.22-linux-x86.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf node-v0.10.22-linux-x86.tar.gz
$ cd node-v0.10.22-linux-x86
$ sudo cp bin/* /usr/local/bin
$ sudo cp -R lib/* /usr/local/lib
$ sudo cp -R share/* /usr/local/share

And now for testing:

$ node -v  # => v0.10.22
$ man node # looks fine
$ npm -v   # UH OH, PROBLEM - Cannot find module 'npmlog'

Now (keeping in mind I'm a complete beginner at node) I did some searching and found there's an environment variable called NODE_PATH, so I tried:

$ export NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules
$ npm -v   # SAME PROBLEM - Cannot find module 'npmlog'

So then I found out where npmlog lives and tried modifying NODE_PATH accordingly:

$ find /usr/local/lib -name npmlog # => /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npmlog
$ export NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules
$ npm -v   # DIFFERENT PROBLEM - Can't find '../lib/npm.js'

At this stage, after more unhelpful googling, I decided I was in over my depth and decided to ask for help. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

It is much faster to do clean NPM reinstall which will remove "broken" links:

wget https://npmjs.org/install.sh

chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh

Then it will ask you to remove old NPM link