Can't use NVM from root (or sudo)

Question

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

Your problem is, that nvm is not in the path when you use sudo.

So type

$ which nvm

and the result will be something like

/home/abc/mynvm/nvm

Try again now with sudo:

sudo /home/abc/mynvm/nvm use v0.10.23

I assume you then run into the issue that the root user can't find the 0.10.13-version, but lets see the next error message...

According to README

When using nvm you do not need sudo to globally install a module with npm -g, so instead of doing sudo npm install -g grunt, do instead npm install -g grunt

Need sudo npm?

In my case, I need to sudo npm run start which needs the access to some file requiring root access. According to this issue,

You don't use sudo. You should instead chmod/chown the file so that the user that has nvm has access to the file;.

In sum

The maintainer of nvm strongly believe we don't need to sudo :P

I had your problem too. Finally I have worked around it. Here is my solution:

1. Uninstall nvm and nodejs. Here are some helpful links: Uninstallation of nvm. If you installed nodejs using apt-get, you can uninstall it with the command apt-get purge nodejs.
2. Install a global nvm. See this page : nvm global. As it says, "Standard nvm has known difficulties working in multi-user or rooted environments."

After restarting your terminal, you can run the command sudo nvm ls.

$ sudo bash -ic "nvm use stable; npm -v"
Now using node v6.3.1 (npm v3.10.3)
3.10.3