How to Solve NPM Command Not Found Error in Bash

The Node Package Manager or npm is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language. It is the default package manager for the Node.js runtime environment.

When you download a package using the npm tool, you may sometimes get a command not found error. This article explains how to install npm and solve this error in Bash.

Solve npm: command not found Error in Bash

You get the npm: command not found error because the nodejs and npm are not correctly installed on your system. The rest of the article will explain different ways to download these tools.

The nodejs and npm can be installed on Linux distributions with the following commands.

Install nodejs and npm for Arch Linux.

sudo pacman -S nodejs npm

Install nodejs and npm for Ubuntu and Debian.

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm

Install nodejs and npm for CentOS and Fedora.

sudo dnf install npm

Besides these, the npm tool and nodejs can be installed manually.

Download the tar file from https://nodejs.org/en/ and unzip it.

curl https://nodejs.org/dist/v17.6.0/node-v17.6.0-linux-x64.tar.xz -o node-v17.6.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
tar -xvf node-v17.6.0-linux-x64.tar.xz

Create a directory under the /usr/local/.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/nodejs

Move node files under /usr/local/nodejs/.

sudo mv node-v17.6.0-linux-x64/* /usr/local/nodejs/

Add /usr/local/nodejs/bin directory to PATH in .bashrc file.

sudo nano ~/.bashrc
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/nodejs/bin

Reload the .bashrc file.

source ~/.bashrc

Install the npm.

curl -L https://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh

You can successfully install the npm tool by choosing the one that suits you best from these options. To check the installation, check the version of the tools.

node --version
npm --version

Now you can download the packages you want using the npm install package command. After doing these, if you still get the error in your development environment, close the application and open it again.