On EC2: sudo node command not found, but node without sudo is ok

Question

Yes, it is a bit annoying but you can fix it with some links:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/node /usr/bin/node
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/node /usr/lib/node
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/npm /usr/bin/npm
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/node-waf /usr/bin/node-waf

There might be more but that is all I have run across so far. Lack of node-waf will cause some npm installs to fail with a rather cryptic error message.

I added /usr/local/bin to secure_path in /etc/sudoers

$ sudo visudo

Then change this line:

Defaults    secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

To:

Defaults    secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin

it happens because the node executable is not found in /usr/bin. So follow the steps:

1. find node:

whereis node

in my case: node: /home/<my_user>/.nvm/versions/node/v8.9.4/bin/node

2. make a symbolic link for node:

   sudo ln -s /home/<my_user>/.nvm/versions/node/v8.9.4/bin/node /usr/bin/node

It's done!

Why not use the absolute path to node? If you planning to use an upstart script it is going to need an absolute path anyways.

sudo /usr/local/bin/node server.js

try the following:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
sudo node --version

You could pass full path to node executable from parent (non-sudo shell) using which command.

sudo `which node`

For me, it worked to just change ownership of node folder from root to ec2-user (logged in as ec2-user).

(Note: I created my node folder in /var/lib/)

sudo chown -R ec2-user /var/lib/node/

Then

npm install mongojs

should work fine (provided you have installed npm ok of course!)