EDIT:
This should be resolved for most folks without any action, however if you have github repos in your packages.json, you may need to do some additional cleaning. See here.

“Error: EPERM, chown” are not issues you want to see when you try to install a Node module through npm.

This issue appears to have crept into node v0.8.19 and npm v1.2.9. Falling back to npm@1.2.2, node@v0.8.18 and the npm installs happen fine.

Package to install is irrelevant. I’ve done the following to no avail:

• cleaned, cleared cache as local & root (npm cache clean and npm cache clear)
• checked/reset all permissions
• Rebuilt node v0.8.19 from src installed.

Hopefully some folks in the know are able to comment soon, in the meantime, I’d stick with node v0.8.18. I’ll post the resolution here when I have it.