npm On-Site has been extensively tested on Ubuntu 14 (Trusty), and is supported on most recent public Linux distributions.
Since it can be configured to only selectively mirror the public registry in addition to your private packages, its disk space requirements are significantly lighter than other private registry solutions. npm On-Site does not use a great deal of processor or memory, so stock hardware will work, with at least 2GB of RAM (we test extensively AWS' m3.large instances).
Its primary variable requirement is disk space: you need enough disk to hold every version of every package you publish, and all the packages you mirror. This can be anywhere from a few gigabytes to half a terabyte if you mirror the entire registry, so prepare accordingly and adjust your whitelist settings to limit the packages you mirror.
For a walkthrough of installation, you can watch our quickstart video.
Update Node to the latest version.
For Ubuntu, we recommend the distribution put together by our friends at NodeSource. To install it, run:
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install nodejsTo use npm On-Site, the server needs to have a recent version (2.x or higher) of the npm client installed. To update npm, run:
sudo npm install npm -gNOTE: Depending on your local setup, you may be able to omit sudo.