npm fix inside Node-RED app container

[Virgus]

Dear all,
I'm not so experienced in these kind of issues so I'm wondering if I can get some help here.

I migrated from an old CasaOS instance based on Armbian to a new Debian instance v0.3.8.
I imported /DATA/AppData/Node-RED directory structure from the old instance and everything went fine except for the Aedes module which needs to be updated to v0.9.0. The message received when trying the update process is the following:

2022-12-03T19:23:29.630Z [err] npm ERR! Your cache folder contains root-owned files, due to a bug in
2022-12-03T19:23:29.630Z [err] npm ERR! previous versions of npm which has since been addressed.
2022-12-03T19:23:29.630Z [err] npm ERR!
2022-12-03T19:23:29.631Z [err] npm ERR! To permanently fix this problem, please run:
2022-12-03T19:23:29.631Z [err] npm ERR! sudo chown -R 1000:1000 "/data/.npm"

The problem I'm having is that I'm not able to use chown: the image does not contain sudo package and I'm not able to install it with apk add sudo.

Another issue with npm is that the version in the Node-RED image is v6.14.15 and when i run npm install commands in the container's terminal it often asks for npm version =>v14.0.0. I tried and tried but couldn't find a way to update npm binary inside the container.

Hope to get some help so that I can complete the migration to the new Debian instance.

Thanks,
V.

[Virgus]

Issues solved with a trick suggested from the NodeRED forum community.

The sudo command was issued from outside the container:
sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /DATA/AppData/Node-RED/data/.npm

A second issue was related to node.js version which had to be => v14.0.0
So the fastest solution was to export AppFile from CasaOS and change node-RED image from nodered/node-red:2.2.2-12 to nodered/node-red:2.2.3-14 and re-import the AppFile.

Please consider updating the official default AppFile to nodered/node-red:2.2.3-14 so that these issues will not occur.

BTW, when an app is removed all data is deleted by default so I had to re-import my backup files.
It would be nice in the future to have an option to update images/containers without the risk of loosing data.

Thanks and have a nice day,
V