Error when installing the express application generator

Question

I recently installed node and express with the help of the mozilla tutorial. I am on the next step of installing the application generator, but when I run

npm install express-generator -g

in my terminal: I recieve the following errors:

npm WARN checkPermissions Missing write access to /usr/local/lib/node_modules
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! syscall access
npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'
npm ERR!  { Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'
npm ERR!   stack: 'Error: EACCES: permission denied, access \'/usr/local/lib/node_modules\'',
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   syscall: 'access',
npm ERR!   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules' }
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/adamgusky/.npm/_logs/2018-02-17T20_26_53_688Z-debug.log

I've been googling this topic for an hour now and I am very new to using the terminal for web applications (this is for a school project), so any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

I had a similar issue. The problem is that you aren't an administrator so you can't write to that folder. However it's considered a BAD IDEA to run sudo npm install. So what you need to do is to change the default install folder for npm global installation to one where you do have write permission.

See npm's documentation: https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions.

And also see this useful article on github: https://github.com/nodeschool/discussions/wiki/Installing-global-node-modules-(Linux-and-Mac)