16

I am on Ubuntu 14.04. I did sudo apt-get install npm. Then I did npm install -g bower, which was successful.

With which npm, I get /usr/bin/npm/.
With which bower, I get /usr/local/bin/bower.

I cloned a github repository which had a bower.json. I try to do bower install in the root but nothing happens. As in, it doesn't echo anything, doesn't install anything. It simply does... nothing. I tried bower --help and nothing comes up.

I tried sudo apt-get update and it says npm is up to date. Nodejs exists too. Whenever I do anything with npm, it simply does nothing.

EDIT: when I do npm --global ls, bower is listed in the directories

What could be the problem here and how can I fix it?

Lucio
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corvid
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6 Answers6

22

This work for me: 

bower install --force

where the --force to install forcefully

swift
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vineet
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14

I had the same problem. It seems to be caused by an incorrect node package.

Removing the node package and installing the legacy package instead worked for me:

apt-get remove node
apt-get autoremove
apt-get install nodejs-legacy
Lucio
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Sivaraj D
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4

You checked which npm and which bower, but you didn't check which node. On Ubuntu, the node package is unrelated to NodeJS. The NodeJS package is installed as nodejs, which will break any scripts that depend on node. This is similar to another question where a global installation of jshint wasn't working.

Assuming you have nodejs installed, you can create a symlink so that node points at nodejs:

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

If that doesn't work, or if you prefer not to use the version of NodeJS in the official repositories, you can install Node from a PPA (which will give you both node and nodejs commands) or use NVM (which is my personal preference, as it avoids the need for sudo when installing npm modules).

Community
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Michael Martin-Smucker
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3

On Ubuntu 14.04, I solved it with:

sudo apt-get remove npm
sudo apt-get remove node
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node
Kenneth Jiang
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0

Ubuntu 16.04 and later

In Ubuntu 16.04 and later Bower package manager can be quickly and easily installed from the Ubuntu Software app. Open Ubuntu Software, search for "bower" and click the Install button to install it. In all currently supported versions of Ubuntu open the terminal and type:

sudo snap install bower --classic

enter image description here

The bower snap package will be updated automatically when updates are available.

karel
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0

For anyone out there that is having this problem but all the other fixes don't work. I found that I was typing the wrong command in, I thought it needed a nodejs before the command like:

nodejs bower install

But bower just executes straight from the terminal

bower install

Stupid I know!

Matthew Dolman
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