[BUG] Unable to update npm from 6.14.13 -> 7.16.0

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

Every time I try to update npm 6.14.13 -> 7.16.0 my terminal ignores my commands.

$ npm install -g npm

Unfortunately is not updating my npm version.

Expected Behavior

I expected to be able to update my npm 6.14.13 to 7.16.0

I'm a junior/beginner front end developer and I'd be very appreciative if somebody could help and explain what I'm doing wrong.

Steps To Reproduce

I've had this issue for a few weeks now, and I can't figure how to debug it. In today's case, I was using npm init to work with TailwindCSS. Starting with:

$ npm init -y

Resulting in the following:

mjw@laptop:~/pro2/tailwindCSS-play$ npm init -y
Wrote to /home/mjw/pro2/tailwindCSS-play/package.json:

{
  "name": "tailwindCSS-play",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}

╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
   │                                                                │
   │      New major version of npm available! 6.14.13 → 7.16.0      │
   │   Changelog: https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v7.16.0   │
   │               Run npm install -g npm to update!                │
   │                                                                │
   ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

As the fancy terminal art suggested, I ran:

$ npm install -g npm

Resulting in:

mjw@laptop:~/pro2/tailwindCSS-play$ npm install -g npm
/home/mjw/.npm-global/bin/npx -> /home/mjw/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npx-cli.js
/home/mjw/.npm-global/bin/npm -> /home/mjw/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! syscall symlink
npm ERR! path ../../../lib/node_modules/npm/man/man1/npx.1
npm ERR! dest /home/mjw/.npm-global/share/man/man1/npx.1
npm ERR! errno -17
npm ERR! EEXIST: file already exists, symlink '../../../lib/node_modules/npm/man/man1/npx.1' -> '/home/mjw/.npm-global/share/man/man1/npx.1'
npm ERR! File exists: /home/mjw/.npm-global/share/man/man1/npx.1
npm ERR! Remove the existing file and try again, or run npm
npm ERR! with --force to overwrite files recklessly.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/mjw/.npm/_logs/2021-06-05T06_04_44_852Z-debug.log

Lots of ERR's, but just to confirm that it didn't go to plan:

$ npm -v 
6.14.13

My next play was to try using --force, as suggested by the terminal.

mjw@laptop:~/pro2/tailwindCSS-play$ npm install -g npm --force
npm WARN using --force I sure hope you know what you are doing.
/home/mjw/.npm-global/bin/npm -> /home/mjw/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
/home/mjw/.npm-global/bin/npx -> /home/mjw/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npx-cli.js
+ npm@7.16.0
added 255 packages from 922 contributors in 3.925s

Alas, the result remains the same:

$ npm -v
6.14.13

I tried again, I sure wish I knew what I was doing.

mjw@laptop:~/pro2/tailwindCSS-play$ npm install -g --force npm
npm WARN using --force I sure hope you know what you are doing.
/home/mjw/.npm-global/bin/npm -> /home/mjw/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
/home/mjw/.npm-global/bin/npx -> /home/mjw/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npx-cli.js
+ npm@7.16.0
updated 255 packages in 5.042s

Sigh:

$ npm -v
6.14.13

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 20.04
• Node: 14.17.0
• npm: 6.14.13

No repository file or test is identified. Start by reproducing the npm 6.14.13 to 7.16.0 global update on Ubuntu 20.04 with Node 14.17.0, then inspect the npm executable and PATH involved in npm -v. Done means the reported EEXIST failure is understood and the requested npm version is selected successfully.