NPM won't install any package on Mac. New, clean build. `EACCES` & other errors

Question

I've just rebuild my Mavericks (Mac OS X Version 9.4) machine from scratch. I am the administrator and only user of this machine.

• I installed Git via their git-2.0.1-intel-universal-snow-leopard.pkg (http://git-scm.com/downloads) in their default /usr/local/git/bin/git location.
• I installed Node via their node-v0.10.30.pkg (http://nodejs.org/download/) in their default /usr/local/bin/node location.
• The final step of Node's installer package included a note that they also installed NPM in their default /usr/local/bin/npm location.
• My $PATH echoes /usr/local/git/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/git/bin (it contains /usr/local/bin).

Running npm install -g bower results in:

npm ERR! Error: EACCES, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower'
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower']
npm ERR!   errno: 3,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower',
npm ERR!   fstream_type: 'Directory',
npm ERR!   fstream_path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower',
npm ERR!   fstream_class: 'DirWriter',
npm ERR!   fstream_stack: 
npm ERR!    [ '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/fstream/lib/dir-writer.js:36:23',
npm ERR!      '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp/index.js:37:53',
npm ERR!      'Object.oncomplete (fs.js:107:15)' ] }
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! System Darwin 13.3.0
npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install" "-g" "bower"
npm ERR! cwd /Users/Home
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.30
npm ERR! npm -v 1.4.21
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower
npm ERR! fstream_path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower
npm ERR! fstream_type Directory
npm ERR! fstream_class DirWriter
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno 3
npm ERR! stack Error: EACCES, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower'
npm ERR! fstream_stack /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/fstream/lib/dir-writer.js:36:23
npm ERR! fstream_stack /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp/index.js:37:53
npm ERR! fstream_stack Object.oncomplete (fs.js:107:15)
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/Home/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0

Running similar installations (npm install -g yo, npm install -g grunt, npm install -g nvm, npm install -g npm) results in what appears to be the same list of errors.

Several people online suggest forcing the installation via sudo, but several others warn this could cause later issues. The manuals for these packages seem not to mention requirement of sudo, and in some cases, they have advised contacting NPM when this issue arises.

Running npm cache clear does not correct the issue.

Running ls -la in the home (~) directory shows my Mac OS X username as the owner of my .npm directory: drwxr-xr-x 15 admin staff 510 Aug 11 23:53 .npm

Does anyone know what has gone wrong and how to correct this? Thank you.

Answer 1

By the way, I solved this issue by changing the owner of /usr/local to be myself, in order to allow NPM to modules in its default location without further requiring sudo for each package's installation.

sudo chown -R `whoami` /usr/local