Installation fails due to "unknown" npm error (broken dependency ?)

I get this error over and over:

npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/formidable/1.0.14
npm ERR! Error: UNKNOWN, symlink '../express/bin/express'
npm ERR! If you need help, you may report this log at:
npm ERR!     <http://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues>
npm ERR! or email it to:
npm ERR!     <[e-mail]>

which then leads to the obviously quite famous error Cannot find module 'express' (7000 hits on StackOverflow).

Fixing this with npm install express leads to exactly the same error.

Simple Log (in a naked-as-possible Ubuntu 12.04 LTS):

npm ERR! System Linux 3.2.0-23-generic
npm ERR! command "/usr/bin/node" "/usr/bin/npm" "install" "express"
npm ERR! cwd /var/www/ghost/Ghost-master
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.20
npm ERR! npm -v 1.3.11
npm ERR! path ../express/bin/express
npm ERR! code UNKNOWN
npm ERR! errno -1

[ErisDS]

Can you tell us a bit more about your environment? It looks like an error I’ve seen when running ubuntu in a VM (vagrant) whilst sharing the folder which Ghost lives in from a Windows host OS. Is that the case here?

If so, it is something to do with the VM software failing to account for the fact that sym-links don’t exist in Windows. If you’re running Vagrant, upgrade to the latest version.

Even if this isn’t the case, this error is to do with sym-links, so is probably to do with the npm file structures and not to do with node itself.

I would try doing npm cache clean to see if something in your npm cache has gone a bit funny - locked files or bad perms etc.

Failing that you can run npm install --no-bin-links which tells npm not to create sym-links when installing, but this does cause other problems in my experience.

[kevinansfield]

@Creative9991 if you need any help/support installing Ghost please ask on our forum