If you have npm version 5 or above, try this first:
$ sudo npm cache verify
Otherwise:
$ sudo npm cache clean
My node and npm versions are:
$ node -v
v0.10.0
$ npm -v
1.2.14
https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/cache
For anyone hitting this page around Sept 29th, 2013, there’s a closed bug in Node.js 0.10.19 which is causing this error.
https://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues/2907#issuecomment-15215278
https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/6263#issuecomment-25113849
If you’re on Heroku you should upgrade to 0.10.20
“engines”: {
“node”: “0.10.20”
}