electron: install electron with Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/usr/lib/node_modules/electron/electron-tmp-download-4860-1517066058438'

node -v
v8.9.4
npm -v
5.6.0
sudo npm install electron -g
/usr/bin/electron -> /usr/lib/node_modules/electron/cli.js

> electron@1.7.11 postinstall /usr/lib/node_modules/electron
> node install.js

/usr/lib/node_modules/electron/install.js:48
  throw err
  ^

Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/usr/lib/node_modules/electron/electron-tmp-download-4860-1517066058438'
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! electron@1.7.11 postinstall: `node install.js`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Failed at the electron@1.7.11 postinstall script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: closed
  • Created 6 years ago
  • Comments: 15 (1 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

Most upvoted comments

npm install -g electron --unsafe-perm=true --allow-root

@wan-ghuan try this sudo npm install -g electron --unsafe-perm=true.

Hope that helped

sudo npm install -g electron --unsafe-perm=true --allow-root This helped to solve the issue, thanks

You need to set the permissions of /usr/lib/node_modules to be writable by your user.

For more info on these NPM errors please see: Troubleshooting Installation

I still have this issue and the command posted by @obendesmond also worked. What I find interesting is that I have had that issue on my Ubuntu 18.04 notebook, my Macbook Pro and two newly-created Ubuntu AWS instances, completely different environments, which makes me think a huge portion of the users may be facing this issue as well. Obviously I may be wrong, but here I leave the question: isn’t the portion of the environments where the unsafe-perm switcher too expressive enough to make a point on the documentation about it (to save new users from some Googling)? Or actually the environments where this is required are inexpressive (and I’m just out of luck)?