Node.js deployment fails on Amazon Elastic Beanstalk due to directory permissions

Question

I am try to install a simple Node.js application on Elastic Beanstalk using the command line tools.

On my git repository I run the command

$ eb deploy

to deploy the contents of my git repository. It deploys fine however the Health status of the application is Red.

If I look at the logs on the Elastic Beanstalk website, it points me to the following error in the logs:

> [email protected] install /tmp/deployment/application/node_modules/nodemon/node_modules/chokidar/node_modules/fsevents
> node-pre-gyp install --fallback-to-build

gyp ERR! configure error 
gyp ERR! stack Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/tmp/deployment/application/node_modules/nodemon/node_modules/chokidar/node_modules/fsevents/build'
gyp ERR! stack at Error (native)
gyp ERR! System Linux 4.1.17-22.30.amzn1.x86_64
gyp ERR! command "/opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-v4.3.0-linux-x64/bin/node" "/opt/elasticbeanstalk/node-install/node-v4.3.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "configure" "--fallback-to-build" "--module=/tmp/deployment/application/node_modules/nodemon/node_modules/chokidar/node_modules/fsevents/lib/binding/Release/node-v46-linux-x64/fse.node" "--module_name=fse" "--module_path=/tmp/deployment/application/node_modules/nodemon/node_modules/chokidar/node_modules/fsevents/lib/binding/Release/node-v46-linux-x64"
gyp ERR! cwd /tmp/deployment/application/node_modules/nodemon/node_modules/chokidar/node_modules/fsevents
gyp ERR! node -v v4.3.0
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v3.0.3
gyp ERR! not ok 

I tried various things like:

1. Creating the directory myself (the directories are owned by root).
2. Deleting everything from /tmp so that hopefully next time it fixes itself.
3. Deleting my node_modules directory.

None of these options work and I can't find a workaround or a reason why this happens. I can run the node.js app locally as well as deploy it to Azure and Heroku without any issues.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem but wasn't using eb to deploy and did not include node_modules/ in the package. The solution that worked for me was to set unsafe-perm=true in .npmrc - see Beanstalk: Node.js deployment - node-gyp fails due to permission denied

Answer 2

Spent an entire day debugging this error. Turns out you need a trailing slash for directories in your .ebignore file.

.ebignore

node_modules/

Without the trailing slash, your local node_modules folder will be uploaded by eb - including dev dependencies.