Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'

Question

What might be causing the error Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'?

npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! syscall access
npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'
npm ERR!  { Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   syscall: 'access',
npm ERR!   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules' }
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/macbookmd101/.npm/_logs/2018-02-21T16_26_08_421Z-debug.log

Answer 1

change your file permissions .. like this

first check who owns the directory

ls -la /usr/local/lib/node_modules

it is denying access because the node_module folder is owned by root

drwxr-xr-x   3 root    wheel  102 Jun 24 23:24 node_modules

so this needs to be changed by changing root to your user but first run command below to check your current user How do I get the name of the active user via the command line in OS X?

id -un

OR

whoami

then change owner

sudo chown -R [owner]:[owner] /usr/local/lib/node_modules

OR

sudo chown -R ownerName: /usr/local/lib/node_modules

OR

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/lib/node_modules