Why am I getting this error after installing right out of the box?

[expressjs]

Why am I getting this error after installing right out of the box?

[dougwilson]

Can you check if there is even a bin/www file in your directory? Can you show what the output of node -v is?

[MadaraUchiha]

bin/www is an existing file. And it runs well (like I said, the server runs successfully, it only fails after one request).

madara@Madara-PC:~/nodejs/magisite$ node -v
v0.10.25

[dougwilson]

OK. Are you running it as ./bin/www? Can you try running it as npm start according to our readme? Would you also be able to paste the contents of bin/www into this issue?

[MadaraUchiha]

Sure. With npm start I get a slightly different error:

events.js:72
        throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
              ^
Error: spawn ENOENT
    at errnoException (child_process.js:988:11)
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:779:34)
npm ERR! weird error 8
npm WARN This failure might be due to the use of legacy binary "node"
npm WARN For further explanations, please read
/usr/share/doc/nodejs/README.Debian

npm ERR! not ok code 0

The contents of the bin/www file are:

#!/usr/bin/env node
var debug = require('debug')('magisite');
var app = require('../app');

app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);

var server = app.listen(app.get('port'), function() {
  debug('Express server listening on port ' + server.address().port);
});

[dougwilson]

According to

npm WARN This failure might be due to the use of legacy binary "node"
npm WARN For further explanations, please read
/usr/share/doc/nodejs/README.Debian

you're system has an old node installed that is messing this stuff up. You'll want to make sure you are not using the nodejs debian package and instead whatever you're supposed to be using on there (sorry, I'm not familiar with it, just that installing the system package just breaks node stuff).

[dougwilson]

You can read more about solutions that may work for you here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21168141/can-not-install-packages-using-node-package-manager-in-ubuntu

[MadaraUchiha]

How would you explain node -v displaying the latest version of node then...? Also, other applications work just fine for me.

[dougwilson]

On the same reasoning, can you you explain that warning? So far everyone that has reported the spawn ENOENT has either had the issue I explained to you or just completely reinstalled all their node.js stuff and then it worked.

If you do find the solution, though, please let us know so we can better help people who encounter it.

[dougwilson]

Can you at least just try to sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy from the StackOverflow link and see if it fixes the issue?

[MadaraUchiha]

I have tried. As well as the symbolic link solution after that one didn't work. Nothing :(

[dougwilson]

Gotcha. Yea, I have no idea. Everyone who has reported this has only given vague solutions, so I really don't know what the solution is, besides that it works for thousands of people per day. Maybe start by slowing stripping down the contents of app.js until it starts working, to see if there is something in there causing it?

[rlidwka]

Just disregard npm warning, those guys want us to rename "node" to "nodejs" for no good reason.

If you want to debug it further,

which node ; ls -l `which node`

... will help a bit. Here is what my debian shows:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Mar 27 12:19 /usr/bin/node -> nodejs

If you want it "just work", I think node ./bin/www will do the job fine.

PS: works for me