Unable to upgrade npm from 1.4.28 to latest (2.2) - node.js

Question

I'm using stable version of node on Ubuntu 14.04. (installed via PPA) When I was trying to upgrade some packages like yo, I got the error below:
npm ERR! notsup Unsupported
npm ERR! notsup Not compatible with your version of node/npm: yo#1.4.2
npm ERR! notsup Required: {"node":">=0.10.0","npm":">=2.1.0"}
npm ERR! notsup Actual: {"npm":"1.4.28","node":"0.10.35"}
npm ERR! System Linux 3.13.0-32-generic
npm ERR! command "/usr/bin/node" "/usr/bin/npm" "update" "-g"
npm ERR! cwd /home/ekrem
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.35
npm ERR! npm -v 1.4.28
npm ERR! code ENOTSUP
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR! /home/ekrem/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0
When I hit (sudo) npm update -g npm, here's the result I got:
npm#2.1.3 /home/ekrem/.node/lib/node_modules/ionic/node_modules/npm
After hitting npm -v
1.4.28
I've also cleared all files under ~/.npm, cleared cache, reinstall components I needed but nothing changes. In addition;
➜ ~ which node
/usr/bin/node
➜ ~ which npm
/usr/bin/npm
➜ ~ less ~/.npmrc
prefix = ~/.node
I've checked similar issues on the net but there's nothing close to mine.
UPDATE:
I've removed nodejs; cleared files under ~/.node & ~/.npm (as #johns has suggested) installed using first method of the instructions here. Here are updated outputs:
➜ node -v
v0.10.35
➜ npm -v
1.4.28
➜ which node
/home/ekrem/local/bin/node
➜ which npm
/home/ekrem/local/bin/npm
➜ npm update -g npm
# returns nothing
➜ ~ npm config get prefix
/home/ekrem/.node

Answer 1

I was facing a similar issue and found this post. The way I got npm to work after several tries is to remove all the npm 'node_module' folders and delete any npm config files particularly the .npmrc file in your home directory.
Then I ran 'sudo apt-get purge nodejs'.
I went to the installer and reinstalled nodejs using the following:
'curl https://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh'
then ran:
sudo apt-get install nodejs
Finally I ran:
npm update -g npm
There were issues posted about a bug in that 'update' function, but it seemed to work for me and I got from 1.4 to 2.7.
I hope this saves someone some time.

Answer 2

This solution worked for me
navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs with cmd.exe and then run the installation without -g:
npm install npm

Answer 3

In my case I had to do the following steps to go from npm#1.4.28 to npm#3.2.0 (currently the latest):
curl -L https://www.npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh
This line may trigger some errors like:
Error: EACCES, mkdir '/usr/lib/node_modules/npm'
If so, simply run:
sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/node_modules/npm (or the specified directory display in the error)
From there:
sudo npm install -g npm#3.0-latest
And now the
npm -v
successfully display a beautiful: 3.2.0

Answer 4

There are a lot of comments out there about "npm update -g" being broken and to not use it for now:
https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/6247
I'd trying resetting or reinstalling npm and then go from there - a fresh reinstall of npm should be relatively painless and fix things:
https://github.com/npm/npm/wiki/Troubleshooting#if-your-npm-is-broken

Answer 5

Similar answer to #ThinkBonobo, but all I had to do was run the update straight from npmjs.org. From a freshly provisioned instance:
$curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | sudo bash -
$sudo apt-get install nodejs
$npm -v
1.4.28
$curl -L https://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh
$npm -v
2.7.3
No other steps were requried.