Troubleshooting

This document covers some common node-sass issues and how to resolve them. You should always follow these steps before opening a new issue.

TOC

• Installation problems
  • 404 downloading binding.node file
• Glossary
  • Which node runtime am I using?
  • Which version of node am I using?
  • Debugging installation issues.
    • Windows
    • Linux/OSX
• Using node-sass with Visual Studio 2015 Task Runner.
• Installing node-sass 4.x with Node < 4

Installation

404s

If you see a 404 when trying to install node-sass, this indicates that you're trying to install a version of node-sass that doesn't support your version of NodeJS, or uses an alternate V8 environment (Meteor, Electron, etc...) that isn't supported by node-sass.

> node-sass@4.6.1 install /src/node_modules/node-sass
> node scripts/install.js

Downloading binary from https://github.com/sass/node-sass/releas…
Cannot download "https://github.com/sass/node-sass/releas…":

HTTP error 404 Not Found

If you encounter this, please check what version of NodeJs you're running (node -v) and check for a supported version of node-sass for your NodeJs by checking our release page.

Proxy issues

If you work in behind a corporate proxy try setting the proxy variables. The following is a guide for setting this up.

Running with sudo or as root

This can happen if you are install node-sass as root, or globally with sudo. This is a security feature of npm. You should always avoid running npm as sudo because install scripts can be unintentionally malicious. Please check npm documentation on fixing permissions.

If you must however, you can work around this error by using the --unsafe-perm flag with npm install i.e.

sudo npm install --unsafe-perm -g node-sass

If this didn't solve your problem please open an issue with the output from our debugging script.

npm

Some users upgrading from previous versions of npm before 5 have found conflicts with old lock file formats. This may be show up as a URL instead of the actual version number when downloading the binary. EX:

Downloading binary from https://github.com/sass/node-sass/releases/download/vhttps://registry.npmjs.org/node-sass/-/node-sass-4.5.3.tgz/win32-x64-57_binding.node
Cannot download "https://github.com/sass/node-sass/releases/download/vhttps://registry.npmjs.org/node-sass/-/node-sass-4.5.3.tgz/win32-x64-57_binding.node":

HTTP error 404 Not Found

The easiest way to get around this is just to cleanup the npm files and reinstall.

rm -rf node_modules
rm package-lock.json
npm cache clean
npm install

Helping us, help you

Find what version of Node you're running

To determine which version of Node.js or io.js you are currently using run the following command in a terminal.

node -v

The resulting value the version you are running.

Debugging installation issues

Node sass runs some install scripts to make it as easy to use as possible, but some times there can be issues. Before opening a new issue please follow the instructions for Windows or Linux/OSX and provide their output in you GitHub issue.

Remember to always search before opening a new issue.

Windows

Firstly create a clean work space.

mkdir \temp1
cd \temp1

Check your COMSPEC environment variable.

node -p process.env.comspec

Please make sure the variable points to C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe

Gather some basic diagnostic information.

npm -v
node -v
node -p process.versions
node -p process.platform
node -p process.arch

Clean npm cache

npm cache clean

Install the latest node-sass

npm install node-sass@latest

Note which version was installed by running

npm ls node-sass

y@1.0.0 /tmp
└── node-sass@3.8.0

If node-sass couldn't be installed successfully, please publish your npm.log and npm.err files for analysis.

You can download reference known-good logfiles to compare your log against.

If node-sass install successfully lets gather some basic installation information.

node -p "require('node-sass').info"

node-sass       3.8.0   (Wrapper)       [JavaScript]
libsass         3.3.6   (Sass Compiler) [C/C++]

If the node-sass installation process produced an error, open the vendor folder.

cd node_modules\node-sass\vendor

Then, using the version number we gather at the beginning, go to https://github.com/sass/node-sass/releases/tag/v<your-version>.

There you should see a folder with same name as the one in the vendor folder. Download the binding.node file from that folder and replace your own with it.

Test if that worked by gathering some basic installation information.

node -p "require('node-sass').info"

node-sass       3.8.0   (Wrapper)       [JavaScript]
libsass         3.3.6   (Sass Compiler) [C/C++]

If this still produces an error please open an issue with the output from these steps.

Linux/OSX

Firstly create a clean work space.

mkdir ~/temp1
cd ~/temp1

Gather some basic diagnostic information.

npm -v
node -v
node -p process.versions
node -p process.platform
node -p process.arch

Install the latest node-sass

npm install node-sass@latest

Note which version was installed by running

npm ls node-sass

y@1.0.0 /tmp
└── node-sass@3.8.0

If node-sass install successfully lets gather some basic installation information.

node -p "require('node-sass').info"

node-sass       3.8.0   (Wrapper)       [JavaScript]
libsass         3.3.6   (Sass Compiler) [C/C++]

If the node-sass installation process produced an error, open the vendor folder.

cd node_modules/node-sass/vendor

Then, using the version number we gather at the beginning, go to https://github.com/sass/node-sass/releases/tag/v<your-version>.

There you should see a folder with same name as the one in the vendor folder. Download the binding.node file from that folder and replace your own with it.

Test if that worked by gathering some basic installation information.

node -p "require('node-sass').info"

node-sass       3.8.0   (Wrapper)       [JavaScript]
libsass         3.3.6   (Sass Compiler) [C/C++]

If this still produces an error please open an issue with the output from these steps.

Using node-sass with Visual Studio 2015 Task Runner

If you are using node-sass with VS2015 Task Runner Explorer, you need to make sure that the version of node.js is same as the one you installed node-sass with. This is because for each node.js runtime modules version (node -p process.versions.modules) , we have a separate build of native binary. See #532.

Alternatively, if you prefer using system-installed node.js (supposedly higher version than one bundles with VS2015), you may want to point Visual Studio 2015 to use it for task runner jobs by following the guidelines.

Installing node-sass 4.x with Node < 4

See the discussion in this comment for a workaround. As of node-sass@v5 only Node 6 and above will be officially supported.