Why can't I install phantomjs (Error: EACCES: permission denied)?

Question

I had phantomjs installed on this machine before, but now it can't find the executable. So I uninstalled it (npm uninstall phantomjs, npm uninstall phantomjs-prebuild).

But installing it doesn't work. Could somebody please tell me why / how to fix it?

$ sudo -H npm -g install phantomjs-prebuilt /usr/bin/phantomjs -> /usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/bin/phantomjs  > [email protected] install /usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt > node install.js  Considering PhantomJS found at /usr/bin/phantomjs Looks like an `npm install -g` Could not link global install, skipping... Downloading https://github.com/Medium/phantomjs/releases/download/v2.1.1/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 Saving to /tmp/phantomjs/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 Receiving...   [=======================================-] 98% Received 22866K total. Extracting tar contents (via spawned process) Removing /usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom Copying extracted folder /tmp/phantomjs/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2-extract-1505979849548/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64 -> /usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom Phantom installation failed { Error: EACCES: permission denied, link '/tmp/phantomjs/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2-extract-1505979849548/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64' -> '/usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom'     at Error (native)   errno: -13,   code: 'EACCES',   syscall: 'link',   path: '/tmp/phantomjs/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2-extract-1505979849548/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64',   dest: '/usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom' } Error: EACCES: permission denied, link '/tmp/phantomjs/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2-extract-1505979849548/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64' -> '/usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom'     at Error (native) npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE npm ERR! errno 1 npm ERR! [email protected] install: `node install.js` npm ERR! Exit status 1 npm ERR!  npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] install script. npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.  npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in: npm ERR!     /root/.npm/_logs/2017-09-21T07_44_13_695Z-debug.log 

The log gives:

2467 silly install [email protected] 2468 info lifecycle [email protected]~install: [email protected] 2469 verbose lifecycle [email protected]~install: unsafe-perm in lifecycle false 2470 verbose lifecycle [email protected]~install: PATH: /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/node-gyp-bin:/usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/node_modules/.bin:/usr/lib/node_modules/.bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin 2471 verbose lifecycle [email protected]~install: CWD: /usr/lib/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt 2472 silly lifecycle [email protected]~install: Args: [ '-c', 'node install.js' ] 2473 silly lifecycle [email protected]~install: Returned: code: 1  signal: null 2474 info lifecycle [email protected]~install: Failed to exec install script 2475 verbose unlock done using /root/.npm/_locks/staging-a072192f34a17023.lock for /usr/lib/node_modules/.staging 2476 verbose stack Error: [email protected] install: `node install.js` 2476 verbose stack Exit status 1 2476 verbose stack     at EventEmitter.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-lifecycle/index.js:280:16) 2476 verbose stack     at emitTwo (events.js:106:13) 2476 verbose stack     at EventEmitter.emit (events.js:191:7) 2476 verbose stack     at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-lifecycle/lib/spawn.js:55:14) 2476 verbose stack     at emitTwo (events.js:106:13) 2476 verbose stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:191:7) 2476 verbose stack     at maybeClose (internal/child_process.js:891:16) 2476 verbose stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:226:5) 2477 verbose pkgid [email protected] 2478 verbose cwd /tmp 2479 verbose Linux 4.10.0-33-generic 2480 verbose argv "/usr/bin/nodejs" "/usr/bin/npm" "-g" "install" "phantomjs-prebuilt" 2481 verbose node v6.11.2 2482 verbose npm  v5.4.2 2483 error code ELIFECYCLE 2484 error errno 1 2485 error [email protected] install: `node install.js` 2485 error Exit status 1 2486 error Failed at the [email protected] install script. 2486 error This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above. 2487 verbose exit [ 1, true ] 

My System

• Ubuntu 16.04
• npm 5.4.2

Answer 1

Although it's a bit too late to answer this but still I would go on with it .

I got it to work by doing this

sudo npm install -g [email protected] --unsafe-perm

Check the comment here

Answer 2

I just got this mistake too and found 2 solutions:

1. fix this via npm config change

   1. check your current npm-config (on linux npm config list --json | grep "user\|unsafe-perm")
   2. if nesseccary change your npm-config
      • npm config set user 0 The UID to set to when running package scripts as root.
      • npm config set unsafe-perm true Set to true to suppress the UID/GID switching when running package scripts. If set explicitly to false, then installing as a non-root user will fail.

2. npmjs.com recommends switching to an npm version manager for this error, described within this article.