How to fix Npm install failed with "cannot run in wd"

I was trying to upgrade my blogs ghost version to 0.9(which btw has some cool features) and I stumbled upon an issue when trying to upgrade the packages.

Every time I run

sudo npm install --production

on my server, I get the following error:

npm WARN cannot run in wd [email protected] node core/server/utils/npm/preinstall.js (wd=/var/www/ghost)

On digging a bit deep, I found that NPM tries to downgrade its privileges when it runs scripts. That downgrading the privileges causes this error.

TL;DR:

So the workarounds are:

1. Run sudo npm run postinstall manually. OR
2. Run npm install --unsafe-perm OR
3. Run sudo chown -R my_name /usr/local

References:
1.Fixing npm permissions:https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions
2.https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/scripts#user