npm ERR! Refusing to delete / code EEXIST

I'm just running a simple npm install and i get this error.

npm ERR! path /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which
npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! Refusing to delete /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which: is outside /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/which and not a link
npm ERR! File exists: /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which
npm ERR! Move it away, and try again

This is the first time I get this error and I don't know what to do.

Steps

1. Delete the node_modules directory completely.
2. Run npm install again.

This should help.

This was how I solved mine after 'googling' around...

• Navigate to the directory your node was installed in
• rename your npm.cmd and npm files
• Try run the installation again
• If successful..delete the files you renamed earlier npm and npm.cmd
• if not, :( :(

The cli commands here...in case you don't want to be renaming and stuffs

cd %ProgramFiles%\nodejs
ren npm.cmd npm2.cmd
ren npm npm2 
npm2 install npm@latest -g

---

del npm2
del npm2.cmd

Rolf-schmidiger

Try running npm update -g npm then run npm i again.
If that doesn't work maybe npm cache clean helps.

If that doesn't work either you should consider removing the node_modules folder in your application and running npm i again.
If you still have no luck, I suggest removing the package-lock.json and the node_modules folder before running npm i.

For windows users (specific to windows 10) this must solve the problem.

Goto this folder:

C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\

delete or rename the npm and npm-cache folders.

This has fixed my problem in Windows.

I got this problem on Linux (npm is the current latest 5.6.0), because I created a tgz archive, and I needed to --dereference some symlinks (see man tar) when creating a tgz archive (which was them copied to VM for testing). This way a lot of symlinks in node_modules/.bin also became regular files. npm says in the error message, .e.g.

>npm ERR! Refusing to delete /path/to/node_modules/.bin/jest: is outside /path/to/node_modules/jest and not a link

This worked for me

npm install -g --force gatsby-cli

Thanks

1. Uninstall node.js from control panel
2. Delete below folders

C:\Program Files (x86)\Nodejs
C:\Program Files\Nodejs
C:\Users\{User}\AppData\Roaming\npm (or %appdata%\npm)
C:\Users\{User}\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache (or %appdata%\npm-cache)
C:\Users\{User}\.npmrc (and possibly check for that without the . prefix too)
C:\Users\{User}\AppData\Local\Temp\npm-*

3. Install node.js again

I had a similar issue but was because initially the project was installed with

yarn install

Then when I tried to install dependencies using

npm install 

I caught this same error. So ensure to use only one: yarn or npm. I fixed it by adding my dependency with

yarn add <vendor_name>

but the same works if you use npm instead, you need to add a dependency.

I had a similar error(mine is not @angular),
resolved by deleting and reinstalling node with installer.

I had the same problem and it turned out the problem was that a stray instance of npm was running somewhere in the background at the same time I was trying to do the install (it was Webpack's npm run serve, to be precise).

Stopping the running instance resolved the problem.

I had a similar problem and what seems to have worked is to uninstall npm and reinstall it, making sure to be logged in as the correct user for the reinstall. I think I previously installed npm as root, but was updating a package as a regular (sudo) user.

I had this problem when working on a virtual, encrypted disk. Moving the project to a regular disk solved the problem.

I the same error but when I was trying to update module "cordova" to version 9. I fixed it by forcing the install with --force. The npm command I used:

npm i -g --force cordova@9 

I downgraded my node version to 10 with nvm, and it installed a newer version of npm (v6) during the process. After that, the package was installed w/o errors. So it's either npm or node version.

In my case, when trying to install for example the program mermaid-cli, and with npm being already installed,

npm install @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli

threw the error in question.

When I added --force, the output was just shortened, but the same error:

$ sudo npm install @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli --force
npm WARN using --force I sure hope you know what you are doing.
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm WARN MY_USER No description
npm WARN MY_USER No repository field.
npm WARN MY_USER No README data
npm WARN MY_USER No license field.

npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! path /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/.bin/rimraf
npm ERR! Refusing to delete /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/.bin/rimraf: is outside /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/rimraf and not a link
npm ERR! File exists: /home/MY_USER/node_modules/npm/node_modules/.bin/rimraf
npm ERR! Remove the existing file and try again, or run npm
npm ERR! with --force to overwrite files recklessly.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /root/.npm/_logs/2022-02-03T13_41_52_634Z-debug.log

I then followed the accepted answer that says that you only need to remove and install npm again and therefore removed the directory node_modules from my home directory where it was installed.

Yet, I still ran into the error when running npm install:

$npm install
npm WARN saveError ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm WARN MY_USER No description
npm WARN MY_USER No repository field.
npm WARN MY_USER No README data
npm WARN MY_USER No license field.

up to date in 0.865s
found 0 vulnerabilities

The easy fix for this was to just install the program with npm again when npm 'node_modules are removed! I happened to find out about by entering the command although npm's node_modules were removed. Ran through.

Logs:

$npm install @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli

> puppeteer@13.1.3 install /home/MY_USER/node_modules/puppeteer
> node install.js

Downloading Chromium r950341 - 142 Mb [====================] 100% 0.0s 
Chromium (950341) downloaded to /home/MY_USER/node_modules/puppeteer/.local-chromium/linux-950341
npm WARN saveError ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/MY_USER/package.json'
npm WARN notsup Unsupported engine for commander@8.3.0: wanted: {"node":">= 12"} (current: {"node":"10.19.0","npm":"6.14.4"})
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your version of node/npm: commander@8.3.0
...
npm WARN MY_USER No description
npm WARN MY_USER No repository field.
npm WARN MY_USER No README data
npm WARN MY_USER No license field.

+ @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli@8.13.10
added 147 packages from 94 contributors and audited 147 packages in 26.338s

10 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

found 0 vulnerabilities

Wrap up:

If npm install fails, install whatever program you like or dislike, but install one program with the npm command even if you just have removed npm's node_modules directory. It will download the node_modules again and in my case, the program worked.