After installing npm on WSL Ubuntu 20.04 I get the message “/usr/bin/env: ‘bash\r’: No such file or directory”

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This may be a line endings issue, but not from Ubuntu. Make sure you have node and npm installed correctly:

  1. From WSL run sudo apt install nodejs npm to install node & npm
  2. From PowerShell/CMD run wsl --shutdown to restart the WSL service
  3. Next in WSL run which npm to confirm it’s installed [output: /usr/bin/npm]

Does the problem persist? Try this next:

Stop Windows path variables being shared with WSL by editing the /etc/wsl.conf file in WSL. If the file doesn’t exist, execute sudo touch /etc/wsl.conf first. Edit the file with the command sudo nano /etc/wsl.conf and add the following configuration:

[interop]
appendWindowsPath = false

Then restart WSL2 with command wsl --shutdown in Windows.

Note 1: This will stop the PATH environment variables from Windows passing through to WSL. Known bug: this stops the VSCode code . command from working in WSL. If this is a problem, use NVM solution described here or switch to using node in a docker container.

Note 2: this also affects pyenv command, see /usr/bin/env: ‘bash\r’: No such file or directory: Incompatible line-endings (WSL?)

Tip from @mike: “I did not want to disable the ability to do code . so I just removed the windows nodejs path by adding this line to my ~/.bashrc PATH=$(echo “$PATH” | sed -e ‘s%:/mnt/c/Program Files/nodejs%%’)”

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