node: command not found

Question

I don't understand why the node command will not work, whereas nodejs works:

$ node --version
zsh: command not found: node
$ nodejs --version
v0.10.15

I tried apt-get install nodejs, but the latest version is already installed.

And furthermore:

$ npm
zsh: command not found: npm

I thought npm was included in NodeJS > 0.10?

Solution 1

The node package is unrelated to NodeJS. See here for information about node :

Amateur Packet Radio Node program (transitional package)

---

You should instead install the nodejs package.

sudo apt-get install nodejs

then use it with the nodejs command.

The reason node doesn't work is likely because of conflicts with the original node package linked above.

---

If you want npm , you'll have to install that as well.

sudo apt-get install npm

Solution 2

I agree, this is a bit of an issue but I don't know why it's happening.

The Fix

First things first, just create a symbolic link from called node pointing to the nodejs binary.

ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

The Problem

Quite a few guides I found for installing Nodejs (here and here) all have similar code to test whether the installation happened correctly. So essentially create a simple server like so:

// hello_node.js
var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.end('Hello Node.js\n');
}).listen(8124, "127.0.0.1");
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8124/');

and then run it in nodejs with the following:

node hello_node.js

And then when I was trying to use npm to install something, it was failing and reporting the same node not found message.

Solution 3

Like @minerz029 already said there is a conflict with the node package. But if you still need the node command (because a script uses only nodefor example), the correct way is to install the nodejs-legacy package:

apt-get install nodejs-legacy

and not create a symlink on your own (especially not in /usr/bin/). This will provide a node command for nodejs.

Solution 4

Try this

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash -

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

:)

Solution 5

may you need to install manually

sudo apt-get install npm

View more solutions

Comments

[Matthieu Napoli]

@AhmedAl-battashi It doesn't help, I have already read it. NodeJS is installed, nodejs is in the PATH, but node and npm aren't available, I can't find them anywhere on my system.

[yjwong]

I'm not entirely sure, but I do recall that the reason why the node binary was renamed was because it conflicted with one of the packages called node (Amateur Packet Radio Node Program).

[Braiam]

Are you sure that you are looking for node and not nodejs? node is not what you think it is.

[Matthieu Napoli]

@Braiam node is used in every tutorial I've seen

[binki]

It looks like the node package in Ubuntu will be renamed to ax25-node. So hopefully in the future Ubuntu will just install a binary named node when you install nodejs. @Braiam The de-facto standard shebang for node.js scripts is #!/usr/bin/env node, so Ubuntu sort of breaks standard node.js scripts because of its binary name conflict policy which was not respected by the node.js project.

[Matthieu Napoli]

I read everywhere that I shouldn't install npm manually because it was included in > v0.10 :/ I'm a little lost

[Matthieu Napoli]

I knew about the node package, however I don't see why a name package has any influence on the command line tool. For example, I don't install php, but php5-cli. But thanks for the answer, I was unsure if manually installing npm would be a problem, apparently it is not.

[Simón]

Funny tip: there is a nodejs-legacy package that provides the symlink, purportedly for compatibility with "legacy code" that still relies on it.

[grooveplex]

Installing the nodejs-legacy package lets you use either node or nodejs.

[grooveplex]

@Simón I think it's a better solution than making a symbolic link.

[Shawn Xie]

It works. I think this is better than @jlouzado's answer.

[karel]

Why are you not installing the latest version?: curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -

[MUHASIN BABU]

setup_6.x is stable

[karel]

The LTS policy for Node.js version 8 is that it is pending LTS now, it starts being LTS in a few months in October, 2017, it starts maintenance period in April, 2019, and ends maintenance in December, 2019. For more information see the table in this answer: askubuntu.com/questions/626383/…

[some bits flipped]

unless you frequently "start from scratch" with your OS install .... MUCH better to let apt manage symlinks in bin. Thanks!

[sudo]

So now I'm counting 3 packages I have to install if I'm doing basically anything with Node.js. I've been trying to install this one Node.js library for like an hour.

[Vinayak]

I was unable to install asciicast2gif because during installation it runs node install.js and I get the error sh: 1: node: not found. This fixes it.