npm install not reading package.json - node.js

Question

not sure what's going on but I have a box running on ubuntu through digital ocean and just cloned my git repo. I have a package.json that is correctly formatted (I've used it before) with ~20 dependencies.
the current dir where I cloned has chmod777 and when I
sudo npm install
It starts installing packages but node_modules doesn't get created nor do any of my node dependencies get pulled in from my package.json and there's a killed log at end of install attempt
Is there anywhere I can begin to debug this? I'm running the latest npm version (3.8.8) and node 5.8
edit: here's the output of npm install
npm WARN deprecated graceful-fs#3.0.8: graceful-fs v3.0.0 and before will fail on node releases >= v6.0. Please update to graceful-fs#^4.0.0 as soon as possible. Use 'npm ls graceful-fs' to find it in the tree.
npm WARN deprecated graceful-fs#2.0.3: graceful-fs v3.0.0 and before will fail on node releases >= v6.0. Please update to graceful-fs#^4.0.0 as soon as possible. Use 'npm ls graceful-fs' to find it in the tree.
npm WARN deprecated graceful-fs#1.2.3: graceful-fs v3.0.0 and before will fail on node releases >= v6.0. Please update to graceful-fs#^4.0.0 as soon as possible. Use 'npm ls graceful-fs' to find it in the tree.
npm WARN deprecated lodash#0.10.0: lodash#<3.0.0 is no longer maintained. Upgrade to lodash#^4.0.0.
npm WARN deprecated wrench#1.4.4: wrench.js is deprecated! You should check out fs-extra (https://github.com/jprichardson/node-fs-extra) for any operations you were using wrench for. Thanks for all the usage over the years.
npm WARN deprecated npmconf#2.1.2: this package has been reintegrated into npm and is now out of date with respect to npm
npm WARN deprecated graceful-fs#1.1.14: graceful-fs v3.0.0 and before will fail on node releases >= v6.0. Please update to graceful-fs#^4.0.0 as soon as possible. Use 'npm ls graceful-fs' to find it in the tree.
npm WARN deprecated lodash#1.0.2: lodash#<3.0.0 is no longer maintained. Upgrade to lodash#^4.0.0.
npm WARN deprecated jade#1.11.0: Jade has been renamed to pug, please install the latest version of pug instead of jade
extract:winston → gunzTar ▄ ╢█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░╟
Killed
and here's my package.json
{
"name": "app",
"version": "1.0.0",
"main": "server.js",
"private": true,
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"start": "node ./bin/www"
},
"dependencies": {
"body-parser": "~1.10.2",
"bower": "~1.4.1",
"cheerio": "~0.20.0",
"connect-mongo": "latest",
"cookie-parser": "latest",
"express": "latest",
"express-session": "latest",
"growl": "~1.8.1",
"grunt": "~0.4.5",
"grunt-bower-task": "~0.4.0",
"grunt-contrib-concat": "~1.0.0",
"grunt-contrib-copy": "~0.8.0",
"grunt-contrib-jshint": "~1.0.0",
"grunt-contrib-sass": "~1.0.0",
"grunt-contrib-uglify": "~1.0.0",
"grunt-contrib-watch": "~0.6.1",
"grunt-html2js": "~0.3.2",
"grunt-notify": "~0.4.1",
"grunt-script-link-tags": "^1.0.2",
"log4js": "~0.6.33",
"method-override": "~2.0.2",
"moment": "^2.12.0",
"mongoose": "~4.4.7",
"npm": "^3.8.6",
"passport": "latest",
"passport-openid": "latest",
"request": "latest",
"socket.io": "~1.4.5",
"socket.io-client": "^1.4.5",
"time-grunt": "~1.2.1",
"winston": "^2.2.0"
}
}

Answer 1

I think it's the memory running out. you can look at /var/log/syslog to find out if it was node. found here: what can cause nodejs to print killed and exit.
or try adding a swap file.