Several of my node programs are exiting with a failure status and no output. E.g.:
$ npmunbox --help # Error - no output
$ grover --version # Error - no output
Even though my nodejs seems to be working fine:
$ nodejs --version
v0.10.32
I'm running Ubuntu 14.04.
The problem was that I had a package called "node - Amateur Packet Radio Node program (transitional package)" (note: this is NOT nodejs) installed:
$ dpkg -l | grep node
ii ax25-node 0.3.2-7.4 amd64 Amateur Packet Radio Node program
ii node 0.3.2-7.4 amd64 Amateur Packet Radio Node program
ii nodejs 0.10.32-1chl1~trusty1 amd64 Node.js event-based server-side javascript engi
This binary is at /usr/bin/node, but some nodejs programs expect to find the binary for nodejs here.
The trick is to uninstall the node package, and then re-install nodejs:
$ sudo apt-get purge node nodejs # Uninstall both
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs # Reinstall nodejs
Now the /usr/bin/node binary should be linked to nodejs (in a somewhat roundabout way):
$ ls -l /usr/bin/node /etc/alternatives/node
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Sep 18 15:57 /etc/alternatives/node -> /usr/bin/nodejs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Sep 18 15:57 /usr/bin/node -> /etc/alternatives/node
And your nodejs programs should now work correctly:
$ npmunbox --help
npmunbox - Extracts a .npmbox file and installs the contained package.
...
$ grover --version
0.1.17