Error /opt/app-root/src/.node-red/package.json not found

[johnwalicki]

When installing additional packages from the Node-RED Manage Palette into a Node-RED Starter container running on IBM Cloud Code Engine, there is an error message:

msg : error
"Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/opt/app-root/src/.node-red/package.json'"

The packages get installed successfully, but the error message confuses users.

@hammoaj suggests a tweak to avoid this errors when installing new nodes from the Manage Palette. It looks as if later versions of Node-RED expect a package.json file to be present in the data directory to update when you install a new node, and it errors if it isn’t there.

A minimal package.json file is needed as it will lose the content between redeploys (unless the data directory is mapped to a persistent volume which it typically won’t be on Code Engine).

The build pipeline should copy in a simple package.json to /opt/app-root/src/.node-red/package.json

[hammoaj]

So I'm thinking that we need to do the following:

1. Put temp.json into the root of the repo (content below)
2. Line 19 of the Dockerfile: COPY temp.json .node-red/package.json

Content of temp.json:

{
  "name": "node-red-ce-tmp",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "Temporary package.json for Node-RED on Code Engine",
  "author": "",
}

I haven't tested this, but it should work

[jmeis]

I'm okay with adding the file, but can you test to make sure it works first @hammoaj?

[johnwalicki]

Not quite:

docker login -u iamapikey -p <apikey> us.icr.io
docker  pull us.icr.io/devnation-walicki/walickinoderedtest@sha256:fff
docker run -d -p 1880:1880 us.icr.io/devnation-walicki/walickinoderedtest@sha256:fff
docker cp temp.json abc123:/opt/app-root/src/.node-red/package.json
docker stop abc123
docker commit abc123 us.icr.io/devnation-walicki/walickinoderedtest:latest
docker push us.icr.io/devnation-walicki/walickinoderedtest:latest

Then in Code Engine - > Edit and Create New Revision
Node-RED starts. Spews this error:

3/24/2022, 10:59:17 PM
msg : string[552]
"npm ERR! code EJSONPARSE↵npm ERR! file /opt/app-root/src/.node-red/package.json↵npm ERR! JSON.parse Failed to parse json↵npm ERR! JSON.parse Unexpected token } in JSON at position 140 while parsing near '...e",↵npm ERR! JSON.parse   "author": "",↵npm ERR! JSON.parse }↵npm ERR! JSON.parse '↵npm ERR! JSON.parse Failed to parse package.json data.↵npm ERR! JSON.parse package.json must be actual JSON, not just JavaScript.↵↵npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:↵npm ERR!     /opt/app-root/src/.npm/_logs/2022-03-25T02_59_15_500Z-debug.log↵"

Because Adam's example has a misplaced , after "author": "",

[johnwalicki]

Once I fixed the json syntax in the temp.json, repeated the steps above, started a new Code Engine revision, it worked perfectly. I was able to add additional packages via the Manage Palette. No errors in the debug sidebar.

[johnwalicki]

If @hammoaj wants to submit the PR, go for it. Else I can do it in the morning.

Actually, this optimization would avoid a layer
Line 12 of the Dockerfile: COPY temp.json /opt/app-root/src/.node-red/package.json

[johnwalicki]

We could also bump the Dockerfile from nodejs-14-minimal to nodejs-16-minimal but I'll open a separate PR for that.

[johnwalicki]

I think there is another way to fix this. /opt/app-root/src/package.json already exists. It contains a variety of Node-RED nodes. There's a node_modules directory. This is the "root" of where Node-RED is running. There's nothing in /opt/app-root/src/.node-red/ Adding a dummy package.json maybe just confuses things. At best, it separates user added nodes from the core nodes (but that has drawbacks too)

The bluemix-settings.js has logic to define the user.dir location.

var userDir = path.join(__dirname,".node-red");
// Ensure userDir exists - something that is normally taken care of by
// localfilesystem storage when running locally
if(!fs.existsSync(userDir)) fs.mkdirSync(userDir);
if(!fs.existsSync(path.join(userDir,"node_modules"))) fs.mkdirSync(path.join(userDir,"node_modules"));

We could just change the bluemix-settings.js so that
var userDir = __dirname;

I'm experimenting with a commit which
Update bluemix-settings.js userDir to point to /opt/app-root/src instead of /opt/app-root/src/.node-red

[johnwalicki]

I don't know if a change of userDir would have implications for Node-RED Starter app Cloud Foundry deployments. Not certain how to test that within the CF pipeline process.

[github-actions]

👋 Hi! This issue has been marked stale due to inactivity. If no further activity occurs, it will automatically be closed.

[johnwalicki]

Related to #166