Can't set up NodeBB

[luke]

Hey guys! Using an Ubuntu 14.04 x64 512MB VPS on Digital Ocean, and I ran into an problem while installing. I followed this guide to the letter: https://github.com/designcreateplay/NodeBB/wiki/Installing-NodeBB-on-Ubuntu

I ran ./nodebb setup after doing all the stuff before that point and ran into this error:

[email protected]:~/cheesy/nodebb# ./nodebb setup
./nodebb: line 86: node: command not found
[email protected]:~/cheesy/nodebb#

What's going on here, and how can I fix it? I have nodejs installed. I had to apt-get install npm manually though, it wasn't included with the nodejs package.

Thanks.

[frissdiegurke]

@lukelarris said:

I have nodejs installed

sure about that? what does which node show?

[luke]

@frissdiegurke Do I just run that in the terminal and tell you what it says? It's not showing anything.

[frissdiegurke]

how did you install nodejs then? self-compiled? you may have to include the node-binary into your PATH then.

[luke]

@frissdiegurke Installed it via apt-get, according to that guide I linked to. Maybe including it in my path would fix it though, how do I do that?

[frissdiegurke]

should be if installed correctly by apt-get, try re-install or did you remove something from the PATH-variable manually? echo $PATH should include sth. like ...:/usr/bin:...

[luke]

@frissdiegurke Not sure if this includes nodejs or not, doesn't seem to:

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games

Just ran apt-get --reinstall install nodejs, $PATH didn't change.

[frissdiegurke]

ya, the PATH shouldn't change PATH is an environment variable that tells your system where to search for applications you don't specify with full path. if correctly installed nodejs should add a file 'node' into one of the paths (most likely /usr/bin, not 100% sure since I don't use ubuntu) the command which checks every path within this variable if it contains such a file, so as conclusion correctly installed which node should show sth. like /usr/bin/node if it doesn't show anything as in your case nodejs cannot run because the system doesn't know that to do with the command node (that gets called from within the nodebb-file).

I just found this.
The last paragraph shows that it could be your system installed it as nodejs instead of node. Try which nodejs and if it shows /usr/bin/nodejs run ln /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node.
@julian Ping. You may want to include that case in your nodebb-script

[luke]

@frissdiegurke Wow thanks, making that symlink worked. Got NodeBB installed successfully

[frissdiegurke]

Great!

[julian]

@frissdiegurke Thanks for the debug -- it's an unusual scenario, and has actually been in the NodeBB docs since the earliest commits*, but was removed perhaps a month ago because it's not a typical use case.

What I imagine happened was @lukelarris installed the package "node", instead of "nodejs":

Package: node
Amateur Packet Radio Node program
The node program accepts TCP/IP and packet radio network connections and
presents users with an interface that allows them to make gateway connections
to remote hosts using a variety of amateur radio protocols.

If you install "nodejs" on top of that, the executable becomes "nodejs". apt-get remove node followed by apt-get install nodejs does not restore the proper paths, either, the correct steps are:

1. apt-get --purge remove nodejs node
2. apt-get install nodejs

* It's been in the docs "since the earliest commits" because when I first tried installing Node.js, I typed in apt-get install node

[frissdiegurke]

@julian but shouldn't it be easy to add this case? just test if which nodejs results sth., otherwise use which node and assign it to a variable... then use this variable instead of node command. I think to have which as dependency isn't to much pain ^^
As long there are no naming-conflicts with nodejs it should work

[julian]

See, I mentioned it here at the end of the install steps in the README

... but of course, it's gone now -- I wouldn't mind adding it back into the Ubuntu/Debian install wiki page

---

Yup, I can have loader.js check which executable to run. Shouldn't be too difficult... #1449

[frissdiegurke]

@julian I don't know what you wanted to do in loader.js, but #1450

[luke]

@julian didn't install the node package, only installed nodejs, redis, and npm. It might have been installed with npm but idk.

[frissdiegurke]

@julian just notice that the github-embed plugin displays 'open' even so they're closed for 4h now, is this an issue of github somehow or does your plugin fail?

[jonathanmh]

@frissdiegurke said:

@julian I don't know what you wanted to do in loader.js, but #1450

Every time I've found nodejs in the wild it was the crazy old stock version of the distribution. Sticking to the node command sounds kinda good to me.

[julian]

@frissdiegurke I don't hammer the API, so my plugin uses an lru-cache and expires stale entries after one day.

I imagine this is better if it were configurable, and to a more sensible default (perhaps default 2 hours?):

• julianlam/nodebb-plugin-github-embed#1
• julianlam/nodebb-plugin-github-embed#2
• julianlam/nodebb-plugin-github-embed#3

Edit: God damnit, my plugin doesn't like dashes either, it seems.

[roykovsky]

@lukelarris I run into the same issue in 14.04 server too. You need to install nodejs-legacy through apt and it's running well then