NPM "ENOENT: no such file or directory error" when installing Sails.js dependencies with Node 8.9.4 LTS

Question

Try deleting the package-lock.json file.

No permission, no internet issue, it's just a general issue of npm. I solved the problem with yarn.

yarn install

Or you can use no-optional flag.

npm install --no-optional

For me, it turned out these errors were hiding the real underlying problem, which was that my credentials for a third-party npm repository (azure devops) had expired. I had to re-run vsts-npm-auth -config .npmrc to update the token in my .npmrc file.

Deleting and regenerating 'package-lock.json' usually solves this issue however that's inherently risky because you will likely be upgrading multiple packages at a time.

In my case it turned out that there was one specific package version that package-lock.json was referencing, that was 5 levels deep in the dependency. That version no longer existed at the npm registry so it caused the install to break. I had to find which package was pulling in this dependency and upgrade that one to resolve the issue.

In my case, I tried deleting package-lock.json, clearing and verifing the npm cache, removing node_modules, even stopping the antivirus (W10 machine) and was still getting this error.

I somehow fixed it by running npm update before npm install, which creates a new package-lock.json:

del /f package-lock.json
rd /s /q node_modules
npm cache clean
npm cache verify
npm update
npm install

Just delete package-lock.json file and then install package(s) you want. All will work.