UsingWW: installing WW2.20: npm ci problem

I'm going through the process of installing WebWork 2.20 under Ubuntu 14.04 (ARM64).

Following the steps at https://wiki.openwebwork.org/wiki/Installation_Manual_for_2.20_on_Ubuntu#Set_File_and_Directory_Permissions, I reached the steps:

$ cd /opt/webwork/webwork2/htdocs/
$ npm ci

When I execute the "npm ci" command, I get unexpected output:

(        )) : reify:fsevents: sill reify mark deleted [ '/opt/webwork/webwork2/htdods/node_modules/fsevents' ]

I have no idea how to navigate the fields there (using Tab or right-arrow key or space key just produces another copy of that same output line. And what is one supposed to do at this point?

installing WW2.20: npm ci problem

by Danny Glin - Monday, 28 July 2025, 5:25 PM

I'm not an expert on node/npm, so this is a lot of speculation on my part, but it may point you in the right direction.

I believe that the message you're seeing is showing the status of the installation. The parentheses at the beginning show the progress, which should fill in as the install proceeds. It looks like your install is hanging right at the beginning, which is why the parentheses are empty.

A quick google leads to some of suggestions:

Check that the files in that directory are writeable by the user that you are using to run the `npm ci` command.
Check that you don't have any uncommitted changes to the code - run `git status` to see if there are any modified files. In particular, check that package-lock.json hasn't been modified.
Check that you have the latest version of npm.
Check that there isn't a firewall blocking outgoing network traffic on your server.