npm command is not found when ssh with bitbucket pipelines on shared hosting

Question

I've installed nodejs as described here.

Everything works fine when I ssh to the server myself. But I've created a script that deploys my application and call it via bitbucket pipelines. Everything else works fine (composer install, php artisan migrate etc.), except npm install. The error message is

./deploy: line 26: npm: command not found

In bitbucket-pipelines.yml I call my script like this:

- step:
    script:
      - ssh user@ip_address ./deploy

When I call the script by myself everything works. The problem is only with bitbucket pipelines. I have no clue why this happens :(.

Answer 1

Running which composer revealed that at least composer command is not getting picked up from your assumed location i.e., ~/composer dir. Instead, it was found in /opt/cpanel/composer/bin/composer.

which npm returned the following:

no npm in (/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/lib/path-bin:/usr/local/jdk/bin:/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin:/opt/bin:/opt/cpanel/composer/bin:/home/handmast/.local/bin:/home/handmast/bin)

Now since you are able to manually run the command npm, you just need to figure about the path from where npm is running and ensure that the path is explicitly added to the user's ~/.bashrc file and things should work fine. You need to do this because as per your observation, ssh is not able to find it.

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/npm/binary

Note: To avoid any confusion, just remember that while adding the path to your binary, you just have to add the path to the directory where npm resides. Don't add npm at the end. For example, following is incorrect way:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/handmast/bin/npm

Correct way is this:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/handmast/bin