Homebrew npm install: could not symlink

Question

So I made the mistake of trying to get rid of all sudo dependencies. I downloaded npm as a package from the site and did a manual/global install. But it seemed as if i was always having to run with sudo...so I tried to uninstall and run with homebrew.

Now I can't get node or npm to even run...I guess I have to link with brew link them but i'm getting this error:

Could not symlink share/doc/node/gdbinit
Target /usr/local/share/doc/node/gdbinit
already exists. You may want to remove it:
  rm '/usr/local/share/doc/node/gdbinit'

I've tried removing that: And i've gotten permission denied.

I have tried running brew prune. I have tried to uninstall then reinstall using these steps:

$ brew uninstall npm
$ brew uninstall node
$ npm uninstall npm -g
$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/node_module

Error: The 'brew link' step did not complete successfully

I am running Yosemite 10.10.5. I have git version 2.6.0 installed. My homebrew is updated. A brew doctor gives me this warning:

Warning: You have unlinked kegs in your Cellar
Leaving kegs unlinked can lead to build-trouble and cause brews that depend on
those kegs to fail to run properly once built. Run `brew link` on these:
    node

Not sure where to go from here. I'm trying to lose my reliance on CodeKit and get gulp up and running.

I've tried removing that: And i've gotten permission denied. - That's because you installed as root in the first place. Now you have to remove using sudo rm '/usr/local/share/doc/node/gdbinit'. Note: If you use homebrew, do not install anything with sudo install anymore into /usr/local. This will create a huge mess. — cel
Now I get 'could not symlink share/system/systemtap/tapset/node.stp /usr/local/share/system/tapset is not writable. I have tried doing a sudo chown -R 'username'/usr/local/share/system/tapset but that didn't work. — pwhitt
I would simply delete all colliding files. It's a bit quirky, but that's why we have awesome package managers like hombrew. Manually uninstalling is simply way too painful. — cel
As you can tell, I'm new using the command line for installation removal of files...do I have to go one by one trying to delete conflicting files? Homebrew does have a command that says it would overwrite the node files but it doesn't seem to do the trick. — pwhitt

nwinkler nwinkler · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-05T06:39:33

It looks like several files and directories in /usr/local are now owned by root, since you ran a couple of steps using sudo. To get rid of these, take back ownership of all of the files and directories under /usr/local:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(brew --prefix)/*

Once that is done, run brew doctor again.

Homebrew npm install: could not symlink

2 Answers