Ah no, here’s the fix: sudo apt-get install build-essential

I find astonishing 4 years later this hasn’t been fixed yet.

I experience this issue every few weeks - I think it has to do with node version changes (which I do using n) and also general upgrades. Just doing npm i -g node-gyp && node-gyp clean did not do the trick but the following did. Basically update my bcrypt to the very latest, uninstall node-gyp and reinstall. Some of the steps may be unnecessary but it worked.

npm un bcrypt;npm i bcrypt --save;npm un node-gyp -g;npm i -g node-gyp && node-gyp clean

I had the exact same issue when running tests on Travis CI. The issue was resolved for node 0.10.x after I ran updated node-gyp and cleaned before building (using npm i -g node-gyp && node-gyp clean).

The easiest way to make sure this runs on every install of bcrypt (or other packages which have similar issues, like node-toobusy) is to add it to your package.json, in the scripts element:

...
"scripts": {
  "preinstall": "npm i -g node-gyp && node-gyp clean"
}
...

I’m not sure if it is a global fix for the problem, but it worked for me, so I figured I’d share my findings 😉

@louischatriot Try updating npm and trying again (npm install -g npm usually).

All I did was “sudo npm install bcrypt --save” It just needs admin permissions 😃

@codersbrothers your comment is not helpful in the slightest. Please refrain from doing such dumps on issues as it is both annoying and does not relate to this issue.

yes this doesn’t seem to be a nodejitsu only issue

I recently had that issue on AMAZON LINUX EC2 Instance and to fix it:

npm install -g npm sudo yum groupinstall "Development tools" npm install bcrypt --save

In my case I was able to install bcrypt (which at the time of writing is (0.8.7), but I cannot install older versions, the node-nyp will vail.

I was abel to make some progress by adding the following variable SET VCTargetsPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V120

Note that on 32bit system the (x86) is not there.

Update

When using meteor adding bcrypt by meteor add npm-bcrypt works like a sharm.

@Kagiso25 looks like you don’t have g++ installed…

To get it to work on nodejitsu:

In your package.json, in the env section add a python variable that points to /opt/local/bin/python2.7

A sample package.json:

    {
        "name":"bcrypt-test",
        "version":"0.1",
        "dependencies":{
            "bcrypt":"*"
        },
        "env": {
              "PYTHON": "/opt/local/bin/python2.7"
        },
        "subdomain":"bcrypt-test",
        "engines":{
              "node":"0.6.x"
        },
        "repository": {},
        "domains": [],
        "databases": {}
    }

After searching Google for an hour I did the following 3 things and it began to work after the very last one.

1.) I made sure Python was downloaded to C:\Python2.7 and the path variable for Python was set. 2.) I did
npm install --global --production windows-build-tools

3.) I added the below to my package.json as shown on another github thread. After doing this, and making sure the PYTHON variable was right it started to work.

 "env": {
    "PYTHON": "C:/python2.7"
  },
  "subdomain": "bcrypt-test",
  "engines": {
    "node": "0.6.x"
  },
  "repository": {},
  "domains": [],
  "databases": {}
}

Thanks man, @RichardJECooke - made my day.

@AvianFlu from Nodejitsu pointed me to: http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Building+node.js+Binary+Addons+on+SmartMachines

I then tried the following:

CC=/opt/local/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/local/bin/gcc npm install bcrypt  

which was successful:

[node@x ~]$ CC=/opt/local/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/local/bin/gcc npm install bcrypt          
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/bcrypt
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/bcrypt
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/bcrypt/0.7.0
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/bcrypt/0.7.0

> bcrypt@0.7.0 install /home/node/local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt
> node-gyp rebuild

make: Entering directory `/home/node/local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt/build'
  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib/src/blowfish.o
  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib/src/bcrypt.o
  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib/src/bcrypt_node.o
  SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib.node
  SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib.node: Finished
  COPY Release/bcrypt_lib.node
make: Leaving directory `/home/node/local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt/build'
bcrypt@0.7.0 local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt

> bcrypt@0.7.0 install /home/node/node_modules/bcrypt
> node-gyp rebuild

make: Entering directory `/home/node/local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt/build'
  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib/src/blowfish.o
  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib/src/bcrypt.o
  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib/src/bcrypt_node.o
  SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib.node
  SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/obj.target/bcrypt_lib.node: Finished
  COPY Release/bcrypt_lib.node
make: Leaving directory `/home/node/local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt/build'
/home/node/node_modules/bcrypt -> /home/node/local/lib/node_modules/bcrypt
bcrypt@0.7.0 node_modules/bcrypt

@ncb000gt @TooTallNate in fact, the issue was that the ~/.node-gyp folder was owned by the root user so any normal user wasn’t able to create a folder in it. Deleting it enabled node-gyp to recreate it with the proper owner and prvileges.

That said, updating npm with node couldn’t have been a bad idea 😃 Thanks for you help.