cli: Issue installing `netlify-cli` with resulting EACCES permission denied error

Describe the bug

For some reason, when installing the netlify-cli we ran into an EACCES denied error to the autocompletion.json file. It seems to pass through when we use sudo in front of installing but this is even from a fresh install of nvm. And invoking the cli with sudo seems to work fine, but any other way fails.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Run npm install netlify-cli -g
Error outputs

Configuration

This is at the global install level even outside of a given project.

Here is the output of npx envinfo --system --binaries --npmPackages netlify-cli --npmGlobalPackages netlify-cli:

System:
    OS: macOS 12.1
    CPU: (8) arm64 Apple M1
    Memory: 1.24 GB / 16.00 GB
    Shell: 5.8 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 16.13.1 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/bin/node
    npm: 8.3.0 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/bin/npm

Expected behavior

It should properly install without any error output. The CLI should be usable without sudo in front.

CLI Output

Here is the error output we’re seeing:

EACCES error


francisagulto@franciss-MBP recipes % npm install -g netlify-cli 
npm WARN deprecated flatten@1.0.3: flatten is deprecated in favor of utility frameworks such as lodash.
npm WARN deprecated urix@0.1.0: Please see https://github.com/lydell/urix#deprecated
npm WARN deprecated rollup-plugin-inject@3.0.2: This package has been deprecated and is no longer maintained. Please use @rollup/plugin-inject.
npm WARN deprecated resolve-url@0.2.1: https://github.com/lydell/resolve-url#deprecated
npm WARN deprecated node-pre-gyp@0.13.0: Please upgrade to @mapbox/node-pre-gyp: the non-scoped node-pre-gyp package is deprecated and only the @mapbox scoped package will recieve updates in the future
npm ERR! code 7
npm ERR! path /Users/user_name/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/lib/node_modules/netlify-cli
npm ERR! command failed
npm ERR! command sh -c node ./scripts/postinstall.js
npm ERR! /Users/user_name/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/lib/node_modules/netlify-cli/node_modules/netlify-redirector/lib/redirects.js:116
npm ERR!       throw ex;
npm ERR!       ^
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, open '/Users/user_name/Library/Preferences/netlify/autocompletion.json'
npm ERR!     at Object.openSync (node:fs:585:3)
npm ERR!     at writeFileSync (node:fs:2153:35)
npm ERR!     at createAutocompletion (/Users/user_name/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/lib/node_modules/netlify-cli/src/lib/completion/generate-autocompletion.js:33:3)
npm ERR!     at postInstall (/Users/user_name/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/lib/node_modules/netlify-cli/scripts/postinstall.js:36:5)
npm ERR!     at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/user_name/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/lib/node_modules/netlify-cli/scripts/postinstall.js:56:1)
npm ERR!     at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1101:14)
npm ERR!     at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1153:10)
npm ERR!     at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:981:32)
npm ERR!     at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:822:12)
npm ERR!     at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:81:12) {
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   syscall: 'open',
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   path: '/Users/user_name/Library/Preferences/netlify/autocompletion.json'
npm ERR! }
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/user_name/.npm/_logs/2021-12-17T22_38_12_208Z-debug-0.log

Additional context

This was on a fresh M1 MacBook installation. This was on a fresh nvm installation as well. The correct path for node and npm seemed to be fine as well.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 3 years ago
Reactions: 2
Comments: 31 (2 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

We use https://github.com/sindresorhus/env-paths to get the recommended user specific directory: https://github.com/netlify/cli/blob/5ba83d8f4446d0d17ac993e4b85e8317e73db664/src/lib/settings.js#L26

I was able to reproduce this issue by running:

On a fresh install (with no prior Library/Preferences/netlify directory) run npm install -g netlify-cli
Run sudo ntl status to make sure the config.json is created (it will be created as root).
Run ntl status and see that it fails with the following error:

You don't have access to this file.

This is basically this issue https://github.com/yeoman/configstore/issues/34#issuecomment-171968299, where if you ran the CLI using sudo once, it can overwrite the permissions.

You can find what Configstore uses here https://github.com/yeoman/configstore/blob/02f07ead1cbbc1c8b49e3c9ba6e7a4896594368d/index.js#L12

Not sure if this was solved by the new version of the library here: https://github.com/sindresorhus/conf#configfilemode

@Fran-A-Dev a possible workaround is to delete the directory and let the CLI regenerate the files via:

sudo rm -rf /Users/francisagulto/Library/Preferences/netlify/
npm install -g netlify-cli
ntl login

Going forward I believe the fix is to ensure we don’t generate config.json under root, but as the current underprivileged user.

@lukasholzer and @Fran-A-Dev please let me know what you think.

+13

erezrokah on Apr 4, 2022

Hello! I just wanted to share a solution I came up with in the permission error as well. So what I did was headed to the ~/Library/Preferences/netlify folder and opened the “get info” option. Then I manually added my user in the “Sharing and Permission” section, together with read & write beside my user. After that, reload the terminal and all’s good to go!

WillowMT on Aug 17, 2022

@lukasholzer @erezrokah Perfect! Success! It worked, it logged me into my Netlify dashboard. Thanks so much for the help! Screen Shot 2022-01-21 at 7 19 25 AM

Fran-A-Dev on Jan 21, 2022