NPM stuck giving the same error EISDIR: Illegal operation on a directory, read at error (native)

Question

I am stuck with this error no matter what directory I am in, and what I type after "npm" in cmd.exe. Here is the npm-debug.log:

0 info it worked if it ends with ok
1 verbose cli [ 'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe',
1 verbose cli   'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js' ]
2 info using [email protected]
3 info using [email protected]
4 verbose stack Error: EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, read
4 verbose stack     at Error (native)
5 verbose cwd C:\Users\me
6 error Windows_NT 6.1.7601
7 error argv "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe" "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js"
8 error node v4.2.6
9 error npm  v2.14.12
10 error code EISDIR
11 error errno -4068
12 error syscall read
13 error eisdir EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, read
13 error eisdir This is most likely not a problem with npm itself
13 error eisdir and is related to npm not being able to find a package.json in
13 error eisdir a package you are trying to install.
14 verbose exit [ -4068, true ]

I have tried and uninstalling/reinstalling nodejs multiple times, I even deleted npm and npm-cache folders in C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming. I'm not sure what went wrong to cause this. One second it was working fine, and now I can't get rid of this error. The explanation in the log does not make sense, as it gives this error in any directory. I should note that running a command prompt as administrator does not give this error. I'm pulling my hair out this Friday evening trying to get this fixed, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

I ran into the same problem while I was changing some npm settings. I did a mistake with one npm config set command and this added a line referring to a non-existing directory to C:\Users\{User}\.npmrc. After I deleted that line manually from .npmrc, the problem was gone.

Answer 2

EISDIR stands for "Error, Is Directory". This means that NPM is trying to do something to a file but it is a directory. In your case, NPM is trying to "read" a file which is a directory (Line: 4). Since the operation cannot be done the error is thrown.

Three things to make sure here.

1. Make sure the file exists. If it does not, you need to create it. (If NPM depends on any specific information in the file, you will need to have that information there).
2. Make sure it is in fact a file and not a directory.
3. It has the right permissions. You can change the file to have all permissions with "sudo chmod 777 FILE_NAME". (Careful: You are giving Read, Write and Execute permissions to every one on that file)

Answer 3

Had the same problem today after i've upgraded my npm from version 6.4.1 to version 6.5.0. I fixed this by downloading the .pkg installer (recommended for most users) from node.js and runned it afterwards.

Answer 4

In my case I was getting the "EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, read" because in my .angular-cli.json file I wasn't providing a full path in "scripts:"

For example I had

"scripts": [
        "../node_modules/hammerjs",
        "../node_modules/moment"
      ],

In fact it should have been

"scripts": [
        "../node_modules/hammerjs/hammer.min.js",
        "../node_modules/moment/min/moment.min.js"
      ],

Answer 5

I had the same issue on Mac OS X (installed with homebrew), and the .npmrc is not the only place node stored config variables. There is a glocal npmrc config file in /usr/local/etc that you have to edit using this command:

sudo nano npmrc

Remove the ca= line, or whatever the config setting was that broke your install, save that file, and try npm again, and you should see it working.

Answer 6

These strange errors occured recently on my OSX machine.

I could help myself the quick & dirty way by running:

sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/local/lib/node_modules/

Something seemed to have messed up the access rights of all global node modules.

Answer 7

If your problem is associated with the React Native packager. Try resetting the cache with react-native start --reset-cache.

Answer 8

For me fixing was add slash after directory name

Answer 9

Make sure node_modules (and your root package.json) doesn't contain a reference to npm's "package.json" module. Deleting package.json FOLDER from node_modules solved the issue for me.

Answer 10

Doing a complete uninstall, including removing paths, etc and reinstalling has solved the problem, very strange problem though.

How to completely remove node.js from Windows

Answer 11

I had this issue with gulp. The problem was that gulp added a dependency to my source file and I think npm tried to open it:

{
  "name": "name",
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "gulpfile.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "appname": "file://gulp",
    "gulp-concat": "^2.6.1",
    "gulp-electron": "^0.1.3",
    "gulp-shell": "^0.5.2",
    "gulp-uglify": "^2.0.0",
    "gulp-util": "^3.0.7",
    "node-7z": "^0.4.0"
  }
}

Make sure that there are no strange references in you package.json file.

Answer 12

Check to ensure you are running npm install from the proper directory.

(The package.json file could be one extra directory down, for example.)

Answer 13

Had the same problem until I tried deleting the .git folder. It worked. I guess this type of problem can have different causes.

Answer 14

In my case I forgot to pass the full path of one of the file it was asking. After passing full path of the file worked :)

Answer 15

Just delete .npmrc folder in c:users>'username' and try running the command it will be resolved !

Answer 16

For me it was because I was using the the wrong path; it should have been a path to a file yet I was wrongly using a path to a directory:

Changed this:

path.resolve(__dirname, '../');

Into this:

path.resolve(__dirname, '../.env')

Answer 17

In my case, i was facing this issue while installing create-react-app in MAC (Mojave OS) with following command :

sudo npm install create-react-app -g

and got errors like this :

npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/src/scheduler'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/src/symbol'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/src/testing'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/src/util'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/src/webSocket'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/symbol'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/testing'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/util'
npm WARN tar EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, open '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/.staging/rxjs-a84420a7/webSocket'

I have read npm.community that try to install without sudo :

npm install create-react-app -g

and it actually solved my issue ..!!

Answer 18

So most of the answers were saying it was related to the .npmrc file.

In my case, I was deploying a serverless application using serverless deploy and the message

EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, unlink '/home/malvadao/workspace/project/.build/node_modules'

was being thrown.

Deleting the .build folder did it for me. It was the folder generated after Typescript compilation. Since the folder is recreated after launching the serverless deploy command, it was enough to solve the problem and continue the flow.

In other words, manually deleting the folder might be enough for you to move forward, without the need to touch .npmrc

Answer 19

I had a similar problem while setting up boilerplate code. It was reading my bundle.js file as a directory. So as stated here. EISDIR mean its a directory and not a file. To fix the issue, I deleted the file and just recreated (it was originally created automatically). If you cannot find the file (because its hidden), simply use the terminal to find and delete it.

Answer 20

I had the same issue. There was a linked folder in my directory which was causing the issue. i added that folder to ignore list and then it started working fine as expected.

Answer 21

I know this isn't specifically asking about forever js.. but google lead me here so.. For me it was as simple as an ending slash.

I just changed:

forever start -a -l /dev/null/ /var/www/node/my_file.js

To:

forever start -a -l /dev/null /var/www/node/my_file.js

And the error disappeared

Answer 22

Make sure to check your version of npm and whether or not there are issues with it. I was having the same issue at the time of this post and I discovered that my npm version (6.5) was having issues. I had to uninstall and reinstall npm version 6.4.1 and then everything started to work great again.

Answer 23

I had a broken symlink to node_modules in a subfolder

Answer 24

In my case these steps solved my problem:

1. terminating npm process (CTRL + C)
2. deleting entire folder
3. creating new one
4. running npm again

Answer 25

In my case, I'm using Windows 10 in Spanish and this version mixes English and Spanish directory names. My problem was that the desktop directory has this name for some commands and escritorio to others. I believe that npm cannot resolve this. My solution was to simply change to another directory starting from C:\ different to my home directory.

Answer 26

I had faced similar issue. I set cafile using the command:

npm config set cafile PATH_TO_CERTIFICATE

I was able to resolve this by deleting the certificate file settings, and setting strict-ssl = false.

Answer 27

I fixed this issue by moving my directory from my exFAT drive which does not support symlinking.

My exFat drive is shared between osx and a bootcamp windows partition so when I tried to clone and npm install my project it was failing but never explains that exFAT doesn't support this functionality.

There are drivers out there that you can install to add the ability to symlink but you'll have to do a lot of your setup manually compared to running a simple npm script.

Answer 28

For mac os: If installed directly from nodejs website the npmrc file would be located in /usr/local/etc/npmrc. Just delete the config which is undefined and this problem would be fixed.

Answer 29

In my case, the C:\Users\{user}\AppData\local\npm files were hidden, so I was not able to find & delete the trouble directory. Took me DAYS to realize this!

So double check to un-hide any folders so you don't miss them! Here's a link to do this if you don't know how.

Answer 30

On Mac:

Per-user config file: ~/.npmrc