NodeJS programs fail, exiting with no output

The problem was that I had a package called "node - Amateur Packet Radio Node program (transitional package)" (note: this is NOT nodejs) installed:

$ dpkg -l | grep nodeii  ax25-node                                             0.3.2-7.4                                           amd64        Amateur Packet Radio Node programii  node                                                  0.3.2-7.4                                           amd64        Amateur Packet Radio Node programii  nodejs                                                0.10.32-1chl1~trusty1                               amd64        Node.js event-based server-side javascript engi

This binary is at /usr/bin/node, but some nodejs programs expect to find the binary for nodejs here.

The trick is to uninstall the node package, and then re-install nodejs:

$ sudo apt-get purge node nodejs  # Uninstall both$ sudo apt-get install nodejs  # Reinstall nodejs

Now the /usr/bin/node binary should be linked to nodejs (in a somewhat roundabout way):

$ ls -l /usr/bin/node /etc/alternatives/nodelrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Sep 18 15:57 /etc/alternatives/node -> /usr/bin/nodejslrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Sep 18 15:57 /usr/bin/node -> /etc/alternatives/node

And your nodejs programs should now work correctly:

$ npmunbox --helpnpmunbox - Extracts a .npmbox file and installs the contained package....$ grover --version0.1.17

If You have already installed nodejs along side node (unrelated to node.js)instead of node --version use nodejs --version