Node-RED install on Raspbian Buster Lite

General
1

I just burned a Raspbian Buster Lite image and want to install Node-RED. The new Node-RED documentation suggests running this command:

$ bash <(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/raspbian-deb-package/master/resources/update-nodejs-and-nodered)

It fails however. The last line of /var/log/nodered-install.log reports:
sudo: npm: command not found

Higher up in the log, during the fresh install of Node LTS, it says

The following additional packages will be installed:
  libc-ares2 libnode64 libuv1 nodejs-doc
Suggested packages:
  npm

I fixed the error by downloading the script and explicitly installing npm when installing Node LTS

2

What exactly did you add to the script?

Npm is included in the node package from nodesource. You should not have needed to do anything.

4

Ah actually the error is just before that - caused by debian moving from testing to stable - and then not being happy to just upgrade things... fix pushed to script - should be ok to re-run.

1 Like
5

Once I additionally installed the npm package via apt-get, the script ran to completion.
$ node -v
v10.15.2

6

yes - running it a second time would have the effect of then doing the update and upgrade over the top... but shouldn't have been necessary.

7

Dave - The fixed script ran successfully. Thanks.
Nick - I just added npm to the appropriate install step (I know it should not have been necessary, but it was)
if sudo apt-get install -y nodejs npm curl
Dave's fix was a better approach on Raspbian Buster as it moved from testing to stable.
-- John

8

I had similar errors: sudo: npm: command not found
and got hung up on the step where the script tries to install nodejs and finally I saw on the Raspberry forum to run: sudo apt update --allow-releaseinfo-change
This fixed the problem and the installation ran OK after that.

9

Yup - The --allow-releaseinfo-change flag was the fix that Dave implemented in the install script. Works for me now.
-- John