Fix electron-prebuilt install.js script error when installing as superuser
Playing with electron, actually upgrading it, I’ve stumbled across this error:
francesco@Golden-Hind:~$ sudo npm i -g electron-prebuilt@0.30.3
/usr/local/bin/electron -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-prebuilt/cli.js
> electron-prebuilt@0.30.3 postinstall /usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-prebuilt
> node install.js
Downloading electron-v0.30.3-darwin-x64.zip
[============================================>] 100.0% of 37.13 MB (1.75 MB/s)
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-prebuilt/install.js:15
throw err
^
Error: EACCES, rename '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-prebuilt/electron-tmp-download/electron-v0.30.3-darwin-x64.zip'
at Error (native)
npm ERR! Darwin 14.4.0
npm ERR! argv "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "i" "-g" "electron-prebuilt@0.30.3"
npm ERR! node v0.12.7
npm ERR! npm v2.11.3
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! electron-prebuilt@0.30.3 postinstall: `node install.js`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the electron-prebuilt@0.30.3 postinstall script 'node install.js'.
npm ERR! This is most likely a problem with the electron-prebuilt package,
npm ERR! not with npm itself.
npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR! node install.js
npm ERR! You can get their info via:
npm ERR! npm owner ls electron-prebuilt
npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.
npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
npm ERR! /Users/francesco/npm-debug.log
Interestingly enough, this issue is kind of random. It appeared in version 0.25.3-2 and it still randomly occurs even if fixed. What’s more, it occurs only on OS X.
The quick fix
The electron install.js script has an issue with permissions on ~/.electron
dir, which it uses as temp path to unpack install files.
chmod 777 ~/.electron
fixed the issue.
Update
The best solution is different, though. Please check this post of mine about best practice to install node on your computer
Check this issue on Github to know more about this.
Thanks for reading.