You need to set NODE_PATH=/usr/lib/node_modules/ to use this importer!!!!! eg: your command could look like: NODE_PATH=/usr/lib/node_modules/ baserock-import npm PACKAGENAME [version] The default (and strongly encouraged) behavour of npm is to install the modules that a program depends on inside the source tree of the project, in a subdirectory called 'node_modules'. The authors of npm are pretty against globally installing packages that other packages depend on. There is a 'install --global' option which seems to be only for programs that you want available in /usr/bin. npm's FAQ responds to the question of how to have globally installed packages, with "Write your own package manager, then. It´s not that hard.". OK! And we could have done that, but we found that by (ab)using the `npm build` command it's possible to get npm to install a package into /usr/lib/node_modules without installing its dependencies. This is consistent with how Baserock (and pretty much every other Linux distribution) tries to do things. Node.js doesn't seem to have a built-in 'look for modules here' path, so you'll need to set NODE_PATH=/usr/lib/node_modules when running programs that use the packages installed in the Baserock system.