What permissions do I need to install Bower on Vagrant on Windows?

Question

I kept running into this error when installing Bower through NPM on a Windows 7 machine running a precise32 Ubuntu Box on Vagrant. I tried every combination of commands and always got the same or very similar errors

Installing locally, globally, with sudo, without sudo, etc.

...
npm ERR! Error: EPERM, open '/home/vagrant/tmp/npm-1214-AHbOCwuM/1391873680685-0.36021817452274263/package/build/node_modules/cheerio/node_modules/htmlparser2/node_modules/readable-stream/test/simple/test-stream2-readable-empty-buffer-no-eof.js'
npm ERR!  { [Error: EPERM, open '/home/vagrant/tmp/npm-1214-AHbOCwuM/1391873680685-0.36021817452274263/package/build/node_modules/cheerio/node_modules/htmlparser2/node_modules/readable-stream/test/simple/test-stream2-readable-empty-buffer-no-eof.js']
npm ERR!   errno: 50,
npm ERR!   code: 'EPERM',
npm ERR!   path: '/home/vagrant/tmp/npm-1214-AHbOCwuM/1391873680685-0.36021817452274263/package/build/node_modules/cheerio/node_modules/htmlparser2/node_modules/readable-stream/test/simple/test-stream2-readable-empty-buffer-no-eof.js' }
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.
npm ERR! System Linux 3.2.0-23-generic-pae
npm ERR! command "/usr/bin/node" "/usr/bin/npm" "install" "-g" "bower" "--no-bin-links"
npm ERR! cwd /home/vagrant
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.25
npm ERR! npm -v 1.3.24
npm ERR! path /home/vagrant/tmp/npm-1214-AHbOCwuM/1391873680685-0.36021817452274263/package/build/node_modules/cheerio/node_modules/htmlparser2/node_modules/readable-stream/test/simple/test-stream2-readable-empty-buffer-no-eof.js
npm ERR! code EPERM
npm ERR! errno 50
npm ERR! stack Error: EPERM, open '/home/vagrant/tmp/npm-1214-AHbOCwuM/1391873680685-0.36021817452274263/package/build/node_modules/cheerio/node_modules/htmlparser2/node_modules/readable-stream/test/simple/test-stream2-readable-empty-buffer-no-eof.js'
...

EDIT: As well as my answer below please note the file directory + file size limitation when using Windows (260 characters I believe)

I have had to install vagrant in a folder directly on my c:/ drive to get over this limitation as some packages end up having nested dependencies causing this limit to be exceeded. My problem was with grunt-contrib-less

Answer 1

Self answering as I couldn't find a solution anywhere else on StackOverflow

I eventually got it to work via changing to the root user via su root and trying to install globally again. Apparently just using sudo wasn't enough.

So it became

root@precise32: npm install -g bower --no-bin-links

EDIT: As well as this solution please note the file directory + file size limitation when using Windows (260 characters I believe)

I have had to init a vagrant instance in a folder directly on my c:/ drive to get over this limitation as some packages end up having nested dependencies causing this limit to be exceeded. My problem was with grunt-contrib-less

EDIT 2: After coming across this problem again and again I'll add a bit more information for people here regarding node modules and vagrant under Windows.

I now overcome the file path limitation via putting any long dependency chains that fail due to path length (usually EPERM) I add one of the packages in the chain to my own package.json. This means the long requirement chain is split as npm does not re-install the package deeper in the tree if it's already installed.

Just make sure you require a version which is valid for the version string for the module.

The order of the dependencies in package.json does not matter, dependencies are resolved before anything is installed