I am facing an issue with npm install on my CentOS 7 machine. Every time I try running the command, it generates a .staging folder inside the node_modules directory but fails to install any actual packages.
The installation seems to initiate but then stops, leaving just the .staging folder. Has anyone experienced this before? What could be the reason behind this issue?
This usually happens because of network issues or registry problems on CentOS. I’ve hit this exact problem working behind corporate firewalls or when npm can’t reach the default registry properly. Try switching registries temporarily: npm install --registry https://registry.npmjs.org/ and see if that fixes it. Another fix that worked for me was bumping up the timeout values - CentOS can be slow with network responses. Run npm config set timeout 60000 and npm config set registry-timeout 60000 before installing. Also check if your firewall is blocking npm’s registry access. That gets missed a lot on enterprise CentOS setups.
ya, i had similar probs b4. u might wanna check permissions too. running npm start as sudo or adjusting ur folder permissions could help. also, make sure your npm version is up to date, sometimes that causes issues. good luck!
This happens when npm hits filesystem errors or gets interrupted mid-install. The .staging folder is npm’s temp space for downloading packages before moving them to their final spot. First, clear your npm cache with npm cache clean --force, then delete node_modules and package-lock.json entirely. Run npm install again after that. I’ve seen this tons on CentOS when there’s not enough disk space or the npm process gets killed. Check your disk space with df -h and watch the install process - see if it’s timing out or throwing specific errors.