132

I've found numerous installation instructions for Node.js but they all seem so complicated -- I'm not a super sys admin but I can get around. I have yum on the system, but I didn't find any node.js packages, and I'm not sure how to compile code on the server or where to put it.

4

20 Answers 20

138
su - 
yum install gcc-c++ openssl-devel
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf node-latest.tar.gz
(cd into extracted folder: ex "cd node-v0.10.3")
./configure
make
make install

Note that this requires Python 2.6+ to use ./configure above. You can modify the "configure" file to point to python2.7 in line 1 if necessary.

To create an RPM package, you can use FPM:

# wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz
# tar zxvf node-latest.tar.gz
(cd into extracted folder: ex "cd node-v0.10.3")
# ./configure --prefix=/usr/
# make
# mkdir /tmp/nodejs
# make install DESTDIR=/tmp/nodejs/
# tree -L 3 /tmp/nodejs/
/tmp/nodejs/
└── usr
    ├── bin
    │   ├── node
    │   ├── node-waf
    │   └── npm -> ../lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
    ├── include
    │   └── node
    ├── lib
    │   ├── dtrace
    │   ├── node
    │   └── node_modules
    └── share
        └── man

Now make the nodejs package:

# fpm -s dir -t rpm -n nodejs -v 0.8.18 -C /tmp/nodejs/ usr/bin usr/lib

Then install and check the version:

# rpm -ivh nodejs-0.8.18-1.x86_64.rpm 
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:nodejs                 ########################################### [100%]

# /usr/bin/node --version
v0.8.18

Source: https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm/wiki/PackageMakeInstall

13
  • 3
    but thats assuming I have make installed right? what id I dont?
    – qodeninja
    Aug 9, 2011 at 16:59
  • 9
    I needed to include yum install gcc-c++
    – Yehosef
    Jun 3, 2012 at 16:23
  • 17
    While this is technically correct, for any sort of maintainability or repeatability, it is HIGHLY recommended to manage packages via RPM (or whatever your distro's packaging is) rather than manually building and installing from source on every machine where it's needed. A number of the answers below link to pre-built packages. Aug 29, 2012 at 19:35
  • 5
    Trying to manage Node.JS and any of its ecosystem via RPM right now is an exercise in futility, and I say this as someone who briefly ran a yum repo containing Node and a number of module packages. Oct 25, 2012 at 11:24
  • 5
    @IsaacRabinovitch They added a ternary if, which didn't come about until Python 2.5. Since CentOS follows the RHEL path of pegging the system Python to some custom-patched version of 2.4, my solution was to yum install python26 python26-devel and then execute python26 configure instead of ./configure. Then, since the Makefile also executes Python scripts, I defined the PYTHON variable in there to be python26 instead of python. Also, you're going to need g++ on there, so if you haven't already, you should yum install gcc-++.
    – Hank Gay
    Mar 8, 2013 at 16:13
65

If you have CentOS 6.x, and have enabled the EPEL repository, you can use yum to install node/npm:

$ sudo yum install npm

After the installation is complete, check to make sure node is setup properly:

$ node -v

(Should return something like v0.10.36).

If you want later versions of Node.js (e.g. 4.x, 5.x, etc.), you can use the Nodesource yum repository instead of EPEL.

6
  • 2
    This worked beautifully on my CentOS 6.4 system and gave me node and npm. I got node 0.10.13, just a little off the latest src tarball 0.10.15. It seems this need upvoting more to stand out as it trumps the 'install from source' option.
    – Neek
    Aug 7, 2013 at 8:53
  • 1
    Follow this to install EPEL repo. Aug 15, 2014 at 6:25
  • 1
    to update enable epel repository run yum install -y epel-release, then you can install node and npm with yum.
    – svassr
    Dec 11, 2015 at 15:00
  • I couldn't get the epel or epel-release to work with yum for v4.2.x. The nave.sh answer below worked beautifully.
    – jcollum
    Jan 9, 2016 at 20:10
  • 1
    Installing via yum gives me a very old version v0.10.42... How can I install Node via yum / rpm to get the latest version (currently 5.9.0)?
    – dokaspar
    Mar 18, 2016 at 8:34
27

The gist "Installing Node.js via package manager" does NOT contain instructions for installing nodejs on CentOS any more. Since Fedora 18, nodejs becomes part of the standard repo. I try "epel-fedora-nodejs" repo, and find it no longer update, leaving the version at the outdated 0.6.0.

The good news is that, we have nave, a Virtual Environments for Node, to help us.

https://github.com/isaacs/nave

Installing nodejs is dead easy now.

$ wget https://raw.github.com/isaacs/nave/master/nave.sh
$ chmod +x nave.sh
$ ./nave.sh install 0.8.8
$ ./nave.sh use 0.8.8
$ node -v  
v0.8.8

In the nave.sh file, you may have to change the local urls to the match with the latest dist structure of nodejs. For 0.11.0 I changed the nave.sh to have the following URL

"http://nodejs.org/dist/v$version/node-v$version-linux-x64.tar.gz"

4
  • 1
    nodejs.tchol.org is dead now
    – Steve P
    Feb 15, 2013 at 17:54
  • @explunit I just update the answer. Please try nave.
    – user974312
    Feb 26, 2013 at 15:14
  • FYI This seems to install it for this user only. If you want to install it for the entire system: ./nave.sh usemain <your version>
    – awl
    Apr 23, 2013 at 20:23
  • "nodejs becomes part of the standard repo" -- on CentOS 7 it's incredibly out of date. The version installed is v10.x (on the CentOS that our IT dept uses anyway).
    – jcollum
    Jan 9, 2016 at 20:12
13

For CentOS

yum install gcc-c++ make git
cd /usr/local/src/
git clone git://github.com/joyent/node.git
cd node
./configure
make
make install
1
  • 2
    You should be using a released version not the github version, unless you're planning on contributing to the node project.
    – B T
    Sep 27, 2013 at 23:33
11

[Edit] Thank you David for pointing out in the comments below that the nodejs.tchol.org site is now pointing to a spam site (sic!).. So this answer doesn't work anymore, don't use it!

I can confirm that the method Chris explained in his solution does work in CentOS 5.4 (i've done it a minute ago :))

wget http://nodejs.tchol.org/repocfg/el/nodejs-stable-release.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck nodejs-stable-release.noarch.rpm
yum install nodejs-compat-symlinks npm

PS: of course you must be root (or use sudo) in order to install that..

Besides installing from source (which is always an option) maybe there is still an alternative: here I read that "node.js has been accepted into Fedora Rawhide as of December 2012 and will be available in Fedora 18.", so maybe it will eventually get into the standard CentOS repositories

I'll have a look at this..

9
  • 3
    This worked beautifully on CentOS 6. Thanks!
    – KyleFarris
    Jul 2, 2012 at 20:52
  • 12
    "nodejs.tchol.org" is dead now Dec 10, 2012 at 12:54
  • 2
    Hence you should just install from source. Don't be afraid.
    – John Hunt
    Jan 3, 2013 at 9:27
  • 2
    @JohnHunt Installing from source means you can't cleanly uninstall any more. I've had this same problem with Ruby. Fortunately, I could just rollback the VM image... Installing from source means you need to have deep understanding of the package you're installing. Considering there are thousands of linux packages, this is not an option!
    – Christian
    Jan 24, 2013 at 8:41
  • 1
    "The link above"? Answers are sorted by vote, and Chris's is now below yours. Mar 9, 2013 at 6:07
10

As noted above, "tchol.org" is gone, leaving CentOS folks looking at either abandoning use of a package manager, or switching to another OS. I made a pact with myself against every doing the former (again) on all but experimental / dev boxes.

Fortunately, there are rpms still available at: http://patches.fedorapeople.org/oldnode/stable/el6/x86_64/

Just ignore the rpm for the repo-installer, which directs yum to the defunct site. That should buy us a little time, unless / until they become too obsolete.

I'll keep my eyes open for newer repos, and post back if I find them.

1
  • I would say the 0.6 version in your link is already quite obsolete. It seems there are really no good options for RHEL/CentOS right now, which is odd considering that Red Hat itself offers node.js PaaS
    – Steve P
    Feb 16, 2013 at 14:12
8

This worked for me on CentOS 5.7:

yum install openssl-devel 
yum install python27
yum install gcc-c++
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf node-latest.tar.gz
cd node-v[tab]
python2.7 configure
make PYTHON=python2.7
make install
1
  • 3
    I have to use python 2.6 on my CentOS 5.10, as python 2.7 is not in repo.
    – ohho
    Feb 25, 2014 at 4:03
7

There's one more approach I haven't seen listed in any of the other answers, and that is to use the binary distributions for Linux which have been published since 0.8.6

Here's the script I use:

# get the latest stable binary 
latest_node=$(curl http://nodejs.org/dist/latest/SHASUMS.txt | grep 'linux-x64.tar.gz' | awk '{ print $2 }')
wget -O ~/nodestable.tar.gz http://nodejs.org/dist/latest/$latest_node
cd /usr/local/
sudo tar xzvf ~/nodestable.tar.gz --strip=1

Or, if you want a specific version (e.g. to stay on the 0.8 series):

wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.8.22/node-v0.8.22-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd /usr/local/
sudo tar xzvf ~/node-v0.8.22-linux-x64.tar.gz --strip=1

And for me on CentOS 6.3, I had to add the following links so that node and npm commands worked from either regular user or from sudo. Might not be needed depending on your version.

sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/node /usr/bin/node
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/node /usr/lib/node
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/npm /usr/bin/npm
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/node-waf /usr/bin/node-waf

Frankly, the situation for node.js on CentOS/RHEL is rather bad, as none of the repos include node.js (see related question here). This answer has the same disadvantages as previously mentioned for compiling from source.

7

The answers above are outdated

AS ROOT

curl -sL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup | bash -
yum install -y nodejs

and you are done.

verify your install with

node -v
2
  • My version of curl doesn't seem to like the Signing Authority of the url's SSL certificate, and so the script fails silently. You can get past it using the curl -k option. Jan 23, 2015 at 19:14
  • Also, after you add -k to the curl command above, you also need to update reference to curl downloads from that domain in the "setup" script that gets downloaded. Then run that script manually using bash. Jan 23, 2015 at 19:22
5

No one mentioned nvm to handle (multiple) safely and easily Node installations https://github.com/creationix/nvm? I find it so useful.

Even useful to build a Node release files tree and so custom rpm packages without scripting too much, latest-node, wget, ./configure, make, make install blah blah.

nvm install 0.10.9

Will download binaries or compile source code according to the release.

1
  • is there an offline install?
    – amit patel
    Jul 16, 2015 at 15:30
5

Run as root on RHEL, CentOS or Fedora, for Node.js v4 LTS Argon:

curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | bash -

Alternatively for Node.js v5:

curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_5.x | bash -

Alternatively for Node.js 0.10:

curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup | bash -

Then install, as root:

yum -y install nodejs

source: https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/

2
  • The only answer that works for CentOS 7.2. And worked so quickly and perfectly.! Oct 2, 2016 at 20:30
  • recommendation: visit the NVM project on GitHub and get the definitive instructions from the README: github.com/creationix/nvm#installation
    – Kay V
    Jul 18, 2018 at 4:23
3

I have some pretty straight-forward instructions, along with a .spec file here:

http://www.chrisabernethy.com/installing-node-js-on-centos-redhat/

You'll be compiling this from source, so you will need to ensure that you have all of the necessary packages for doing that on your system (gcc and friends). This set of instructions is for building an RPM, so if you are missing any required packages, rpmbuild will let you know which ones you need to install first.

3
  • 1
    Welcome to Server Fault! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.
    – user9517
    Nov 14, 2011 at 16:20
  • Also, the link refers to /usr/src/redhat, which doesn't seem to exist in my CentOS 5 install (it's at /usr/local/src if I understand correctly)
    – Kato
    Nov 17, 2011 at 20:11
  • 2
    Recent changes would also require people to update their Python installation (or configure will not work on any CentOS server still using Python 2.4).. Consider freshening up the information and placing it here?
    – Tim Post
    Oct 3, 2012 at 23:43
3

You'll also need npm

git clone https://github.com/isaacs/npm.git
cd npm
sudo make install
1
  • not amy more it comes with node. Dec 28, 2012 at 20:15
3

You can use nodebrew. $ curl -L git.io/nodebrew | perl - setup $ export PATH=$HOME/.nodebrew/current/bin:$PATH $ source ~/.bashrc $ nodebrew install-binary latest $ nodebrew use latest $ node -v

2

For Ubuntu, this worked for me for version 0.4.10

cd /usr/local/src/
sudo wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-v0.4.10.tar.gz
sudo tar zxvf node-v0.4.10.tar.gz 
cd node-v0.4.10/
sudo ./configure 
sudo make
sudo make install
1
  • question is for CentOS
    – jcollum
    Jan 9, 2016 at 1:33
2

here is my Dockerfile which installed node v0.10.36 in centOS 7

FROM centos:7

RUN    yum -y update
RUN    yum -y install vi, vim, unzip, tar
RUN    yum -y install wget, curl, git

RUN    yum -y install epel-release
RUN    yum -y install npm
2

My answer for version 4+:

yum -y install wget
wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v4.0.0/node-v4.0.0-linux-x64.tar.gz
tar xzf node-v4.0.0-linux-x64.tar.gz -C /usr/local
rm -rf node-v4.0.0-linux-x64.tar.gz
mv /usr/local/node-v4.0.0-linux-x64 /usr/local/node
ln -s /usr/local/node/bin/node /usr/bin/node
ln -s /usr/local/node/bin/npm /usr/bin/npm

Check in the folder https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/ to find the download link for the latest version.

3
  • This saved me on CentOS server running Plesk - building the latest version (5) from source fails since gcc is so out of date. I'd update gcc but usually updating anything manually via yum turns Plesk into a screaming child. Nov 19, 2015 at 18:41
  • is there a tar for 4.x stable? The answer will be better if it survives a few version changes.
    – jcollum
    Jan 9, 2016 at 1:34
  • I edited my answer to include a link to the latest distribution folder where you can find the distro-specific install. Jan 9, 2016 at 16:16
1

Below code worked pretty well on CentOS 6

wget http://nodejs.tchol.org/repocfg/el/nodejs-stable-release.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck nodejs-stable-release.noarch.rpm
yum install nodejs-compat-symlinks npm

It does not work anymore, http://nodejs.tchol.org is not online anymore.

1
  • It used to work. That machine doesn't exist anymore it looks like.
    – rox0r
    Jan 28, 2013 at 2:06
1

I went thru the task of doing this installation myself on RHEL 5.8 not too long ago. Unfortunately, with nodejs.tchol.org going offline, the only option is to build it from source.

However, the build process got quite a bit complicated as the build script involves python code that doesn't work with the default version of Python on RHEL. After a lot of trial and error (and a lot of googling), I found this blog post which basically describes a step to step on the following tasks required.

a. Install Python 2.6 b. Setup that version of python as an alternate version, then setting it as default c. configure and install node.js d. Switching Python back to the default 2.4 version.

The key is that you should switch back to Python 2.4 afterwards; otherwise, simple things like yum will fail.

http://www.robeesworld.com/blog/31/installing_node_js_0_8_under_centos_5_8

1

After installing using the top-rated answer, i was unable to install any global modules (-g) without Sudo permissions. NPM update showed errors. Below method worked perfect for me, there is no need for SU or SUDO permissions.

I installed Node.js and NPM using the below method taken from (https://gist.github.com/isaacs/579814) but modified two lines of commands as per the advise from a comment posted by deesejohn in that page.

cd
sudo yum install gcc-c++
echo 'export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bashrc
mkdir ~/local
mkdir ~/node-latest-install
cd ~/node-latest-install
curl http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz | tar xz --strip-components=1
./configure --prefix=$HOME/local
make install
curl -L https://www.npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Check installed version using node -v and npm -v

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .