Ubuntu repo "nodejs" require symlink to "node" to use Forever?

July 24, 2014 76.9k views
carlchristianlewin
By:
carlchristianlewin

Ubuntu 14.04 x64

I follow the instructions here [ https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-node-js-on-an-ubuntu-14-04-server ] and ran the following commands;
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs
$ sudo apt-get install npm

"Because of a conflict with another package, the executable from the Ubuntu repositories is called *nodejs** instead of node. Keep this in mind as you are running software."*

user@xxx:~ $ node --version
*The program 'node' can be found in the following packages:

  • node
  • nodejs-legacy Ask your administrator to install one of them*

user@xxx:~ $ nodejs --version
v0.10.25

I then installed forever;
$ sudo npm install -g flatiron
$ sudo npm install -g forever

user@xxx:~ $ forever --help
/usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory

I read the info here [ https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-host-multiple-node-js-applications-on-a-single-vps-with-nginx-forever-and-crontab ] but it makes no mention of needing to create a symlink and always refers to the executable as [ $ node ]

I assume that [ $ forever ] is looking for [ $ node ] and can not find it. Do I need to create a symlink to direct [ $ node ] to [ $ nodejs ]?

Log In to Comment
5 Answers
kamaln7 MOD July 24, 2014

You can create a link, it would work just fine:

sudo ln -s "$(which nodejs)" /usr/bin/node
Reply
ppnsanders September 4, 2014

I fired up a VPS yesterday with ubuntu and nodejs using these commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --yes --force-yes install git
sudo apt-get --yes --force-yes install build-essential openssl libssl-dev pkg-config
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.31/node-v0.10.31.tar.gz
tar zxvf node-v0.10.31.tar.gz
cd node-v0.10.31
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo npm install -g forever
sudo rm -rf ~/.npm

Hope that helps..

Reply
michael January 21, 2015

Yes. I think you can remove the nodejs package you installed using apt-get, then just create a symbolic link. When you ran $ sudo apt-get install npm it already added nodejs. The only thing messing up the system is the package name, which can be corrected by adding the following symbolic link.

ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

Reply
amorgan115 July 27, 2015

I had the same trouble also i was unable to use forever command because of it, thanks for the answer!

Reply
romdisc September 23, 2015

wrong question. See post of jellobird at stackoverflow how to fix this

Reply
Have another answer? Share your knowledge.