Docker not able to run nodejs npm

Question

When I run below commands in a Dockerfile:

FROM ruby:2.3

RUN apt-get update

RUN apt-get install nodejs npm -y

RUN apt-get install vim -y

RUN apt-get install memcached -y

I get below error:

Sending build context to Docker daemon 29.74MB

Step 1/12 : FROM ruby:2.3

---> 09c6ceeef3bc

Step 2/12 : RUN apt-get update

---> Using cache

---> c41c3235c3ba

Step 3/12 : RUN apt-get install nodejs npm -y

---> Running in b0d407900cbd

Reading package lists...

Building dependency tree...

Reading state information...

**E: Unable to locate package npm

The command '/bin/sh -c apt-get install nodejs npm -y' returned a non-zero code: 100**

Please suggest a solution, thank you in advance.

Small hint: when you move all apt-get commands separated by ; or && into one RUN instruction and execute rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* at the end to clean the cache then you will have much smaller result Docker image. — cgrim

cgrim cgrim · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-11T11:14:53

Docker image ruby:2.3 is based on Debian 9 Stretch where is older nodejs package and no npm package.

You can do it like this:

RUN apt-get update; \
    apt-get install -y curl gnupg; \
    curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | bash -; \
    apt-get install -y nodejs; \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

At first it installs curl to be able to download setup script and gnupg is needed by that setup script.

You can read more on nodejs official web: https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions

Docker not able to run nodejs npm

2 Answers