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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-01T08:02:51+00:00

I am new to node, npm, socket.io. Found many guides that are fairly useful,

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I am new to node, npm, socket.io. Found many guides that are fairly useful, but I am encountering some errors which I don’t understand the cause, hopefully you can help me out.

npm install socket.io -g

returns …

npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/socket.io
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/socket.io
npm ERR! error installing socket.io@0.9.4
npm ERR! error rolling back socket.io@0.9.4 Error: EACCES, unlink   '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/socket.io/.npmignore'
npm ERR! Error: EACCES, unlink '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/socket.io/.npmignore'
npm ERR! Report this *entire* log at:
npm ERR!     <http://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues>
npm ERR! or email it to:
npm ERR!     <npm-@googlegroups.com>
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! System Darwin 10.8.0
npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install" "socket.io" "-g"
npm ERR! cwd /Users/Kinglee
npm ERR! node -v v0.6.14
npm ERR! npm -v 1.1.0-beta-4
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/socket.io/.npmignore
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! message EACCES, unlink '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/socket.io/.npmignore'
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/Kinglee/npm-debug.log

however when i did npm install socket.io, there was no error, everything was fine.

Sorry forget to add this info here …

I actually tried sudo npm install socket.io and it installed without error but when i try to cd ~/node_modules, I don’t see socket.io, this cause 'socket.io not found' error when i try to do require('socket.io') as I follow this tutorial here (http://blog.koostudios.com/?p=470)

Kind of confused fellow here :/

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The most important portion is:

    EACCES, unlink   '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/socket.io/.npmignore'

    This means you do not have permission to delete this file.

    I assume this means you ran the command as your standard user account, which will not have write permission into /usr/.

    Prepend sudo to your command to re-run the command with administrator privileges:

    sudo npm install socket.io -g

    Your local configuration may not have /usr/local/lib/node_modules/ in node‘s default module loading locations. The module loading path is controlled via the NODE_PATH environment variable (before starting node) or the require.paths variable (once node is running). Because I prefer to keep local configuration separated from the program, I’d prefer to set the environment variable to modify paths, though the other mechanism may be useful for long-lived applications that must remain up even when the environment changes. (This is definitely an advanced use.)

    To change the NODE_PATH variable for a single instance, sh and its derivatives will let you simply add NODE_PATH=/path before the command. For example, change:

    node ./foo.js

    to

    NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules ./foo.js

    If you have multiple directories, use the standard :-separated directories, just as you would for PATH:

    NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules:/home/sarnold/node_modules ./foo.js

    To make this persistent, use the shell’s export builtin to export the value of the NODE_PATH variable to all children and place the modification in your shell’s start up files, such as ~/.bashrc:

    export NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules

    This will take effect in all new shells automatically. You can source this file into currently-running shells if you don’t wish to restart them:

    source ~/.bashrc
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