Without root/sudo permission install Node.js on Linux/CentOS

3 simple steps to install Node.js on GNU/Linux CentOS without root permission nor sudo access.

Node.js is a free and open source JavaScript runtime for server side programming. For GNU/Linux environments, users can do installations with RPMs or via package managers like yum. However, most often developers face restrictions during installation due to the need of root permission for directories like "/usr/local/bin". Here, we will be installing Node.js inside a directory under user_home.

1. Download binary distribution

Latest binaries can be downloaded from Node.js official release directory.

https://nodejs.org/download/release/

For CentOS 6.7, I downloaded Linux 64-bit binary of latest version (8.4.0) from below link.

https://nodejs.org/download/release/v8.4.0/node-v8.4.0-linux-x64.tar.gz

Make sure to pick suitable binary for your installation.

2. Extract into installation directory

This binary file must be extracted into the directory that you are installing Node.js. In my machine, I extracted it into below directory.

/home/user/software/nodejs_v8.4.0/

3. Add Node.js to PATH

It is required to append Node.js installation to PATH variable. For that, you can update either ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc file as below.

export NODEJS_HOME=/home/user/software/nodejs_v8.4.0
export PATH=$PATH:$NODEJS_HOME/bin

4. Verify installation

Open up a console and check Node.js version to verify the installation as below.

node --version

If you see the installed version as v8.4.0, that confirms the installation is completed. For this we did not use any additional GNU/Linx user privileges.