Fyi, I think the current recommendation is to install both node and npm as a regular user. I generally follow the pattern described here for node: http://blog.

Fyi, I think the current recommendation is to install both node and npm as a regular user. I generally follow the pattern described here for node: http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/04/04/development-environment/ http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/04/04/development-environment/. If you do that, and then install npm as you describe (but as a regular user), then npm will automatically be installed under the node installation.