error in cygwin with npm install

[natedsaint]

I've been debugging this for a couple hours, and I've tested that I can install a few other packages through npm. Unfortunately, express appears to still be giving me these errors, so I'm fairly certain it's something about the way the package is set up. Maybe a bad tar or something? Let me know if I'm doing anything obviously dumb. =)

$ npm install express
npm ERR! tar "-mvxpf" "-" "--no-same-owner" "-C" "/tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-    0.4860939725767821/contents/___package.npm" tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
npm ERR! tar "-mvxpf" "-" "--no-same-owner" "-C" "/tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/contents/___package.npm" tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
npm ERR! tar "-mvxpf" "-" "--no-same-owner" "-C" "/tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/contents/___package.npm" tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
npm ERR! tar "-mvxpf" "-" "--no-same-owner" "-C" "/tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/contents/___package.npm"
npm ERR! Failed unpacking /tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/tmp.tgz
npm ERR! couldn't unpack /tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/tmp.tgz to /tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/contents
npm ERR! error installing express@2.3.11 Error: Failed tar "-mvxpf" "-" "--no-same-owner" "-C" "/tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/contents/___package.npm"
npm ERR! error installing express@2.3.11 exited with 2
npm ERR! error installing express@2.3.11     at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/utils/exec.js:85:8)
npm ERR! error installing express@2.3.11     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:67:17)
npm ERR! error installing express@2.3.11     at ChildProcess.onexit (child_process.js:192:12)
npm ERR! Error: Failed tar "-mvxpf" "-" "--no-same-owner" "-C" "/tmp/npm-1307585204577/1307585206803-0.4860939725767821/contents/___package.npm"
npm ERR! exited with 2
npm ERR!     at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/utils/exec.js:85:8)
npm ERR!     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:67:17)
npm ERR!     at ChildProcess.onexit (child_process.js:192:12)
npm ERR! Report this *entire* log at:
npm ERR!     <http://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues>
npm ERR! or email it to:
npm ERR!     <npm-@googlegroups.com>
npm ERR!
npm ERR! System CYGWIN_NT-6.1-WOW64 1.7.9(0.237/5/3)
npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install" "express"
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/Nathan/npm/npm-debug.log
npm not ok

[tj]

no clue, works fine on osx / ubuntu etc, i'd assume it's a windows issue lol windows isn't exactly great for running node stuff, but it definitely does not like that tarball, maybe try installing progressively older versions of express to see if it was an npm publish issue

[natedsaint]

Yeah, my webserver is running ubuntu so I'll probably just end up moving it there, but I figured you guys would want to be aware that your product wasn't working on cygwin (for whatever reason). I'll try a few more debugging steps and see what happens.

[tj]

I have no way of testing unfortunately, though I imagine many portions of node / node modules don't work quite right on windows in general, hopefully that will change with the next release, then I'll have to actually start using path.join()

[JasonGiedymin]

Try the solution in my gist:
https://gist.github.com/1031386

Which boils down to doing "npm cache clean", blowing out the /tmp/* dir contents, start a new dash shell to do "rebaseall -v", and retry your npm install.

The alt solution of course, is to just use *nix. :-)

[natedsaint]

@JasonGiedymin I think I tried a similar strategy based on what @isaacs recommended over on his git.

I'll take a look at it and see what I can do. The work comps here only run Windows, but we have *nix servers set up for production obviously. I just wanted to make sure I had a decent local setup so I can blow stuff up without bringing down any of our poor *nix boxes.

[natedsaint]

It worked! I think my issue was that I was missing the step where I blew out the temp files.
Thanks for the fix, I'll close this out.

[JasonGiedymin]

Sweet!