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Install NodeJS

install NodeJS Node

Debian 12 Instructions

The script below has been tested on Debian 12, and will install Node 18 and now 20. You can simply change the NODE_MAJOR variable if you wish to install a different version of Node, such as Node 22.

#!/bin/bash

# Set the version of node we wish to install
NODE_MAJOR=20

# Add the keyring for the node repository we are going to add later
sudo apt-get update \
  && sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg \
  && sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings \
  && curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg

# Now add the node repository that we wish to install node from
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_$NODE_MAJOR.x nodistro main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list

# Now install the nodeJS package
sudo apt-get update \
  && sudo apt-get install nodejs -y
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Original (Outdated) Instructions

Below are the original instructions I used to give, which are now outdated and will not work in the future.

Below are the instructions to install nodejs on a debian based distribution such as Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 - Native Packages

sudo apt update && \
sudo apt install npm node-gyp nodejs-dev libssl1.0-dev -y
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18.x LTS

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash - \
  && sudo apt-get install -y nodejs -y
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Running the webserver

Add the bin folder to your path, then simply execute:

node [serverFile.js]
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This will run node on a single thread. If you have multiple vCPUs then you may wish to run Nginx or Apache as the HTTP handler which calls node.

References

Last updated: 20th July 2024
First published: 16th August 2018

This blog is created by Stuart Page

I'm a freelance web developer and technology consultant based in Surrey, UK, with over 10 years experience in web development, DevOps, Linux Administration, and IT solutions.

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