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Improved error message when a required os lib is missing #1651
Description
Description:
When trying to upgrade our application from node 24 to 26 the setup node failed with the following error:
Run actions/setup-node@v7
Attempting to download 26.12.1...
Not found in manifest. Falling back to download directly from Node
Acquiring 26.12.1 - x64 from https://nodejs.org/dist/v26.12.1/node-v26.12.1-linux-x64.tar.gz
Extracting ...
/usr/bin/tar xz --strip 1 --warning=no-unknown-keyword --overwrite -C /home/runner/_work/_temp/80f11687-6f0f-4adc-850c-6c97cf44d2e0 -f /home/runner/_work/_temp/e4551be6-f2d4-4553-8e19-c7704a200d29
Adding to the cache ...
Done
Error: Node installation failed. Node may not be installed or not on PATH: The process '/home/runner/_work/_tool/node/26.12.1/x64/bin/node' failed with exit code 127
I figured out that our self hosted runners based on Ubuntu 24.04 did not have the required lib libatomic1 installed. After installing this it worked as expected. This was introduced as a requirement in node 25.
What would be great would be if the action could provide me with a better error message like. Node failed to install because of a missing system lib. Instead of exit code 127
Justification:
To make it easier to find out why the install failed.
Are you willing to submit a PR?
Yes
Activity
v-priya-kinthali commentedon Oct 22, 2026
Hello @SanderBlom👋,
Thank you for reporting this issue. We will investigate it and get back to you as soon as we have some feedback.