Gitbook installation issues via installGitbook()

[mdozmorov]

Reproducible on Ubuntu, Xubuntu 14.04, as VMs on VirtualBox

1. Installing gitbook via installGitbook() function results in

sudo: no askpass program specified, try setting SUDO_ASKPASS
Error in installGitbook() : 
  gitbook installation failed. Typically installing as root/Administrator from the terminal/console works:
   npm install gitbook -g
   npm install gitbook-pdf -g
   npm install gitbook-plugin

Solution: Tested many options. The simplest is to restart R session as administrator (use sudo)

2. Even after installing sudo apt-get install nodejs npm, bash complains:

sh: 1: node: not found

Solution: Make symbolic link sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

3. gitbook-pdf has trouble installing, via installGitbook() and from command line using sudo nmp install gitbook-pdf -g. The error is - for some reason access to phantomjs tarball is denied. Attempt to install phantomjs separately does not help. No solution.

> phantomjs@1.9.7-5 install /usr/local/lib/node_modules/gitbook-pdf/node_modules/phantomjs
> node install.js

Downloading http://cdn.bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
Saving to /usr/local/lib/node_modules/gitbook-pdf/node_modules/phantomjs/phantomjs/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
Receiving...
Error requesting archive.
Status: 403
Request options: {
  "protocol": "http:",
  "slashes": true,
  "auth": null,
  "host": "cdn.bitbucket.org",
  "port": null,
  "hostname": "cdn.bitbucket.org",
  "hash": null,
  "search": null,
  "query": null,
  "pathname": "/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2",
  "path": "/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2",
  "href": "http://cdn.bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2"
}
Response headers: {
  "content-type": "text/html",
  "content-length": "14134",
  "connection": "keep-alive",
  "date": "Sat, 24 May 2014 01:09:34 GMT",
  "last-modified": "Sat, 24 May 2014 00:08:24 GMT",
  "etag": "\"999f4f548bfffe25245dc29e49c57e9c\"",
  "accept-ranges": "bytes",
  "server": "AmazonS3",
  "age": "22909",
  "x-cache": "Hit from cloudfront",
  "via": "1.1 eceebc7fc75ad1b377e012ce418717cd.cloudfront.net (CloudFront)",
  "x-amz-cf-id": "6DFQrXaTEQKCLggnbgBq1jY5xm4b0Ybu5XsTAn00xm62IdNS9Hwvwg=="
}
Make sure your network and proxy settings are correct.
npm WARN This failure might be due to the use of legacy binary "node"
npm WARN For further explanations, please read
/usr/share/doc/nodejs/README.Debian

npm ERR! weird error 1
npm ERR! not ok code 0

[sirselim]

I've got a few responses to your observations:

1. I installed gitbook from source, but noted the same if trying to install from within R.

2. I think this is an error in the Rgitbook code and have made local changes to the functions that call checkForGitbook() and everything seems to be working. It appears to have an issue with the return value when finding the installed gitbook version. When I get time I want to explore this more and hope to submit a pull request.

3. gitbook-pdf is no longer required by gitbook, only ebook-convert from the program calibre:
https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook-pdf

Edit: just noticed that a fix for point 2. has been suggested in a couple of pull requests already.