Node Version Manager install - nvm command not found

I am trying to install NVM as per these instructions

I typed in this command in terminal:

$ curl https://raw.github.com/creationix/nvm/master/install.sh | sh

After running the install, I restart the terminal and attempt to install Node.js with this command:

$ nvm install 0.8

but I get the response:

-bash: nvm: command not found

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong here.

Additional Info--

I've been looking around for solutions from other posts and forums. I found another solution using

$ git clone git://github.com/creationix/nvm.git ~/.nvm

but this times out every time I attempt that. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I think you missed this step:

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

You can run this command on the bash OR you can put it in the file /.bashrc or ~/.profile to automatically load it

https://github.com/creationix/nvm

Check your .bash_profile or .profile file. You most likely had a problem during the installation.

You should have the following at the end of one of those files.

[[ -s $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh ]] && . $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh  # This loads NVM

You can also check to see if you have a .nvm folder.

ls -a | grep .nvm

If you're missing that folder then the installation failed to run the git command. This could be due to being behind a proxy. Try running the following instead.

git clone http://github.com/creationix/nvm.git .nvm

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh Add this line to ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc

Quick answer

Figure out the following:

  1. Which shell is your terminal using, type in: echo $0 to find out (normally works)
  2. Which start-up file does that shell load when starting up (NOT login shell starting file, the normal shell starting file, there is a difference!)
  3. Add source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh to that file (assuming that file exists at that location, it is the default install location)
  4. Logout/login
  5. Profit?

Example

As you can see below it states zsh and not bash. enter image description here

To fix this I needed to add source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh to the ~/.zshrc file as when starting a new terminal my Deepin Terminal zsh reads ~/.zshrc and not bashs ~/.bashrc.

Why does this happen

This happens because when installing NVM it adds code to ~/.bashrc, as my terminal Deepin Terminal uses zsh and not bash it never reads ~/.bashrc and therefor never loads NVM.

In other words: this is NVMs fault.

More on zsh can be read on one of the answers here.

Not directly connected to the question, but there is a similar problem that may happen, take a look at this question: Can't execute nvm from new bash

Here's my answer on that post, just for the reference:

If you are running from a new bash instance, and you HAVE the initialization code at your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, etc, then you need to check this initialization file for conditionals.

On Ubuntu 14, there is a:

case $- in
    *i*) ;;
      *) return;;
esac

At line 6, that will halt it's execution if bash is not being ran with the "-i" (interactive) flag. So you would need to run:

bash -i

Also, at the end of the file, there is a

[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

That will halt it's execution if not being ran with $PS1 set (like on a remote ssh session).

If you do not wish to add any env vars or flags, you will need to remove those conditionals from your initialization file.

Hope that's helpful.

If you are using OS X, you might have to create your .bash_profile file before running the installation command. That did it for me.

After installing nvm,

  1. Restart the terminal so that nvm is loaded in the terminal session.
  2. Type the following command to verify nvm command works.

nvm