Can't use NVM from root (or sudo)
I've mentioned that my application uses different version of NodeJS when running from sudo.
$ node -v
v0.10.23
$ sudo node -v
v0.11.8-pre
This v0.11.8-pre caused me some problems, so I definitely don't want to use it, but I can't change it for root.
$ sudo nvm use v0.10.23
sudo: nvm: command not found
I've tried to install nvm from root user, but got error "NVM already installed", but still nvm not found when running from sudo. What is my problem?
The below list of commands (source: digitalocean) seems to fix the problem
WARNING!!!! In some circumstances, these commands can break your system! Make sure you know what do these command do!!! related
n=$(which node); \
n=${n%/bin/node}; \
chmod -R 755 $n/bin/*; \
sudo cp -r $n/{bin,lib,share} /usr/local
The above command is a bit complicated, but all it's doing is copying whatever version of node you have active via nvm into the /usr/local/ directory (where user installed global files should live on a linux VPS) and setting the permissions so that all users can access them.
Hope this helps!
My solution is to create symbolic links from the versions of node and npm I'm using to /usr/local/bin:
sudo ln -s "$NVM_DIR/versions/node/$(nvm version)/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/node"
sudo ln -s "$NVM_DIR/versions/node/$(nvm version)/bin/npm" "/usr/local/bin/npm"
This makes npm and node available to all users.
The fundamental reason is because nvm is not a real program. It's a bash function that gets loaded in the user's .profile, .bashrc, or ... So sudo doesn't automatically pick it up from the $PATH like most other programs.
An alternative node version manager is n: https://github.com/tj/n . That is a real program, so sudo will pick it up via the $PATH without any hacks (as long as sudo has /usr/local/bin in its $PATH).
sudo npm install -g n # install 'n' globally
which n # should be /usr/local/bin/n
sudo n lts # need sudo to switch node versions
node --version # v6.10.0
sudo node --version # v6.10.0