Npm Global Install EACCES: permission denied

Install any npm packages as global (e.g. npm i -g firebase-tools or npm i -g npm) will trigger EACCES: permission denied error on my Lubuntu 20.04. Even if I run it with sudo, there is no error but package is not updated.

npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! syscall access
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib'
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib']
npm ERR!   stack:
npm ERR!    'Error: EACCES: permission denied, access \'/usr/local/lib\'',
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   syscall: 'access',
npm ERR!   path: '/usr/local/lib' }
npm ERR! 

There is a solution to enable installaton via sudo, but I didn't try it.

The global packages seems to be installed at /usr/local/lib/node_modules which belongs to root. Technically I could do sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/lib/node_modules, but npm package involve others directory whch require chown as well.

At last I decide to opt for this solution

• Reinstall npm with a node version manager (recommended)
• or Manually change npm’s default directory

I opted for change npm’s default directory

Create a directory for global installations at your home directory

mkdir ~/.npm-global

Configure npm to use the new directory path

npm config set prefix '~/.npm-global'

Edit ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc and add the following, depending on your system.

export PATH=~/.npm-global/bin:$PATH

Reload ~/.profile

source ~/.profile

Test global installation

npm i -g npm

Check version

npm -v