Recommended way to install truffle on a Linux System

I you're running Truffle on Linux or MacOS X, you should not install it with sudo, otherwise you might encounter some permission issues. It is recommended to install truffle as a normal user. Before we can install truffle as a normal user we have to cleanup the system. It is also recommended to install nodejs and npm with nvm (node version manager). An advantage of nvm is that you can run different node versions on the same machine.

Cleanup node and npm

Remove all packages which have been installed with sudo npm install -g

First we want to find out which packages have been installed with sudo npm install -g. Get a list of all installed packages:

$ sudo npm list -g --depth=0

/usr/lib 
|[email protected] 
|[email protected] 
[email protected]

Now we want to remove them

$ sudo npm remove -g anache-cli

$ sudo npm remove -g truffle

$ sudo npm remove -g npm

If you have additional packages in the tree, you can also remove them.

Remove node

If you installed node with a the package manager of your Linux distro you can delete the package and skip Remove node and Remove npm. If you installed it manually you have to delete it manually.

We have to find out where node is installed before we can delete it.

$ whereis node

in my case I get the following output

node: /usr/bin/node /usr/share/man/man1/node.1.gz

find the location of node_modules node and delete it

$ sudo rm /usr/bin/node /usr/share/man/man1/node.1.gz

Remove npm

We have to find out where npm is installed before we can delete it.

$ sudo whereis npm

in my case I get the follwing output:

npm: /usr/bin/npm /usr/share/man/man1/npm.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/npm.1

$ sudo ls -l /usr/bin/npm

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Feb 4 08:47 /usr/bin/npm -> ../lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/bin/npm /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/share/man/man1/npm.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/npm.1

Depending on the linux distribution you might have different paths

Now that we have cleaned up everything we can start with the installation of nvm and node

Installation of node and npm with nvm

Install nvm (node version manager)

See: https://github.com/creationix/nvm

$ curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash

In order to load the new environment you have to close your console and open a new one

Install node.js with nvm

$ nvm install node # "node" is an alias for the latest version

Install the latest npm version

$ npm install -g npm

Delete and reset the npm prefix

See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34718528/nvm-is-not-compatible-with-the-npm-config-prefix-option

$ npm config delete prefix

$ npm config set prefix $NVM_DIR/versions/node/v11.10.0

Install truffle and other packages as a normal user

$ npm install -g truffle

Check the installation

$ whereis truffle

If everything went as expected truffle should be installed in:

~/.nvm/versions/node/v11.10.0/bin/truffle

Install the other packages which you had installed as sudo, such as ganache-cli or create-react-app.