“Please try running this command again as Root/Administrator” error when trying to install LESS

Question

I\'m trying to install LESS on my machine and have installed node already. However, when I enter \"node install -g less\" I get the following error and am not sure what to d

Answer 1

This will definitely help. Answer by npm itself. https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions

Below is extracted from the URL for your convenience.

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Option 1: Change the permission to npm's default directory

1. Find the path to npm's directory:

   npm config get prefix

For many systems, this will be /usr/local.

WARNING: If the displayed path is just /usr, switch to Option 2 or you will mess up your permissions.

2. Change the owner of npm's directories to the name of the current user (your username!):

   sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(npm config get prefix)/{lib/node_modules,bin,share}

This changes the permissions of the sub-folders used by npm and some other tools (lib/node_modules, bin, and share).

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Option 2: Change npm's default directory to another directory

1. Make a directory for global installations:

   mkdir ~/.npm-global

2. Configure npm to use the new directory path:

   npm config set prefix '~/.npm-global'

3. Open or create a ~/.profile file and add this line:

   export PATH=~/.npm-global/bin:$PATH

4. Back on the command line, update your system variables:

   source ~/.profile

Test: Download a package globally without using sudo.

`npm install -g jshint`

Instead of steps 2-4, you can use the corresponding ENV variable (e.g. if you don't want to modify ~/.profile):

NPM_CONFIG_PREFIX=~/.npm-global

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Option 3: Use a package manager that takes care of this for you

If you're doing a fresh install of Node on Mac OS, you can avoid this problem altogether by using the Homebrew package manager. Homebrew sets things up out of the box with the correct permissions.

brew install node