Installing still makes npm disappear

[faiq]

Hey I tried updating npm but I forgot to add the sudo before it, and for some reason it doesn't find my npm anymore. This is the commands and output I got

07:04 PM  Faiq @ Faiqs-MacBook-Air  ~
$ npm i -g npm
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/npm
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/npm
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.23.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.23.tgz
npm ERR! error rolling back Error: EACCES, unlink '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm'
npm ERR! error rolling back  npm@1.4.23 { [Error: EACCES, unlink '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm']
npm ERR! error rolling back   errno: 3,
npm ERR! error rolling back   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR! error rolling back   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm' }
npm ERR! Error: EACCES, unlink '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm'
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES, unlink '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm']
npm ERR!   errno: 3,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm' }
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! System Darwin 13.3.0
npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "i" "-g" "npm"
npm ERR! cwd /Users/Faiq
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.28
npm ERR! npm -v 1.4.20
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno 3
npm ERR! stack Error: EACCES, unlink '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm'
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/Faiq/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0

07:05 PM  Faiq @ Faiqs-MacBook-Air  ~  ⏎ 3
$ sudo npm i -g npm
sudo: npm: command not found

cc: @othiym23

[zeke]

Me too

[othiym23]

We can't fix this until we have a more transaction install process, which will be coming with multi-stage install.

(This is also probably a dupe of many other issues.)

[faiq]

So the reason I made it its own issue was because I didn't use sudo to install it. If its a dupe, we can go ahead and close it :)

[iarna]

This should be largely fixed by just putting off rm commands as long as possible. But even if that doesn't do it, this should be prevented by #6942. As such, I'm closing this and further discussion can happen over there.