Understanding npm's "skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module"

Question

I am trying to force the version of selenium-webdriver and protractor using npm's package.json for that purpose but I get the following error message:

npm WARN install Couldn't install optional dependency: Unsupported
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/findup-sync/node_modules/minimatch/node_modules/lru-cache
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/findup-sync/node_modules/minimatch/node_modules/sigmund
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/async
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/aws-sign2
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/delayed-stream
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/combined-stream
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/forever-agent
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/form-data
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/hoek
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/boom
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/cryptiles
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/http-signature
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/minimatch
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/glob
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/oauth-sign
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/qs
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/selenium-webdriver
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running move [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/sntp
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/hawk
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/request
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running add [email protected] node_modules/grunt-protractor-runner/node_modules/protractor
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running update [email protected] node_modules/protractor/node_modules/form-data
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running update [email protected] node_modules/protractor/node_modules/hawk
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running update [email protected] node_modules/protractor/node_modules/qs
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running update [email protected] node_modules/protractor/node_modules/request
npm WARN skippingAction Module is inside a symlinked module: not running remove [email protected] node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver
npm WARN update-linked node_modules/selenium-webdriver needs updating to 2.48.2 from 2.44.0 but we can't, as it's a symlink
npm WARN update-linked node_modules/protractor needs updating to 3.0.0 from 1.8.0 but we can't, as it's a symlink

Can someone please explain what these error messages mean?

Answer 1

Remove node_modules directory and type npm install.