Setting up Mahara on a brand new, clean machine running Ubuntu 20.04 I found I had to install all the things.
Once I got npm working the 'npm install' step failed when using the current supported stable version of npm. I eventually rolled back to 8.11.3 from 16.15.0 and it just worked.
We should take a look at the package.json file and upgrade it to work with the current stable version of npm. There are also a lot of deprecated packages in use. It is likely that these would be resolved by moving to the latest versions of the packages we're using.
+++
gold@shipnet:~/Mahara/mahara$ npm install
npm WARN deprecated request@2.88.2: request has been deprecated, see https://github.com/request/request/issues/3142
npm WARN deprecated chokidar@2.1.8: Chokidar 2 does not receive security updates since 2019. Upgrade to chokidar 3 with 15x fewer dependencies
npm WARN deprecated tar@2.2.2: This version of tar is no longer supported, and will not receive security updates. Please upgrade asap.
npm WARN deprecated har-validator@5.1.5: this library is no longer supported
npm WARN deprecated uuid@3.4.0: Please upgrade to version 7 or higher. Older versions may use Math.random() in certain circumstances, which is known to be problematic. See https://v8.dev/blog/math-random for details.
npm WARN deprecated fsevents@1.2.13: fsevents 1 will break on node v14+ and could be using insecure binaries. Upgrade to fsevents 2.
npm WARN deprecated source-map-resolve@0.5.3: See https://github.com/lydell/source-map-resolve#deprecated
npm WARN deprecated resolve-url@0.2.1: https://github.com/lydell/resolve-url#deprecated
npm WARN deprecated urix@0.1.0: Please see https://github.com/lydell/urix#deprecated
npm WARN deprecated source-map-url@0.4.1: See https://github.com/lydell/source-map-url#deprecated
> node-sass@4.14.1 install /home/gold/Mahara/mahara/node_modules/node-sass
> node scripts/install.js
Cached binary found at /home/gold/.npm/node-sass/4.14.1/linux-x64-57_binding.node
> es5-ext@0.10.61 postinstall /home/gold/Mahara/mahara/node_modules/es5-ext
> node -e "try{require('./_postinstall')}catch(e){}" || exit 0
> node-sass@4.14.1 postinstall /home/gold/Mahara/mahara/node_modules/node-sass
> node scripts/build.js
Binary found at /home/gold/Mahara/mahara/node_modules/node-sass/vendor/linux-x64-57/binding.node
Testing binary
Binary is fine
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: fsevents@^1.2.7 (node_modules/chokidar/node_modules/fsevents):
npm WARN notsup SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Unsupported platform for fsevents@1.2.13: wanted {"os":"darwin","arch":"any"} (current: {"os":"linux","arch":"x64"})
added 513 packages in 20.937s
Patch for "main" branch: https:/