[Bug]: docker compose up leads to npm cache permission error

[FabianHertwig]

What happened?

docker-compose up can not start the Librechat container, as it errors out with an error:

npm ERR! Your cache folder contains root-owned files, due to a bug in
npm ERR! previous versions of npm which has since been addressed.

Steps to Reproduce

I am on MacOS 14.2.1 with Rancher Desktop 1.11.1

git clone https://github.com/danny-avila/LibreChat.git
cd LibreChat
cp .env.example .env
# Adapt .env file, see below
mkdir meili_data_v1.5 images .env.production .env.development data-node
docker-compose up

For the .env file I have set the UID and GID to what id shows: uid=504, gid=20. And I have set an API key for OpenAI

What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

No response

Relevant log output

LibreChat         | 
LibreChat         | > LibreChat@0.6.5 backend
LibreChat         | > cross-env NODE_ENV=production node api/server/index.js
LibreChat         | 
LibreChat         | npm ERR! code EACCES
LibreChat         | npm ERR! syscall mkdir
LibreChat         | npm ERR! path /.npm
LibreChat         | npm ERR! errno -13
LibreChat         | npm ERR! 
LibreChat         | npm ERR! Your cache folder contains root-owned files, due to a bug in
LibreChat         | npm ERR! previous versions of npm which has since been addressed.
LibreChat         | npm ERR! 
LibreChat         | npm ERR! To permanently fix this problem, please run:
LibreChat         | npm ERR!   sudo chown -R 504:20 "/.npm"
LibreChat         | 
LibreChat         | npm ERR! Log files were not written due to an error writing to the directory: /.npm/_logs
LibreChat         | npm ERR! You can rerun the command with `--loglevel=verbose` to see the logs in your terminal
LibreChat exited with code 0

Screenshots

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[danny-avila]

I’ve never experienced this, have you tried without this step?

mkdir meili_data_v1.5 images .env.production #…etc

not sure if manually creating those directories is necessary

[FabianHertwig]

If I don't create them manually, then I get other permission errors:

Error response from daemon: error while creating mount source path '/Users/myuser/Documents/Projects/LibreChat/meili_data_v1.5': chown /Users/myuser/Documents/Projects/LibreChat/meili_data_v1.5: permission denied

After running chown $(whoami) on the folders that cause the error I still end up on the nom cache error.

[sixlive]

I'm running into this as well.

[sixlive]

I was able to get around it with the following changes

diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index 1dac186b..ec3910bc 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -1,6 +1,9 @@
 # Base node image
 FROM node:19-alpine AS node
 
+ARG UID
+ARG GID
+
 COPY . /app
 WORKDIR /app
 
@@ -10,7 +13,8 @@ RUN apk --no-cache add curl && \
     # This will preserve any existing env file if it's already in source
     # otherwise it will create a new one
     touch .env && \
-    # Build deps in seperate 
+    mkdir /.npm && \
+    chown -R $UID:$GID /.npm && \
     npm ci
 
 # React client build
diff --git a/docker-compose.yml b/docker-compose.yml
index 5f7fb0b7..2744ffe8 100644
--- a/docker-compose.yml
+++ b/docker-compose.yml
@@ -14,6 +14,9 @@ services:
     build:
       context: .
       target: node
+      args:
+        UID: ${UID}
+        GID: ${GID}
     restart: always
     user: "${UID}:${GID}"
     extra_hosts:

My env file

#=============#
# Permissions #
#=============#

UID=${PUID}
GID=${PGID}

My shell profile already has PUID and PGID mapped to what I need.

[FabianHertwig]

This works for me as well! Thanks!

[dims12]

So, why not commit these changes into repo?

[danny-avila]

I only just noticed this from before. I'd like to integrate it if I can figure it out.

[FabianHertwig]

Is the nom cache part of a volume? If not, might be the issue that different users build and run the docker image?

[zhdenny]

Did this ever get officially "fixed"? The proposed fix by another user here looks outdated when I look at the current DockerFile

I just hit this issue once I tried to setup my librechat.yaml for the first time