NVM cannot find installed Node binary, PATH problem on Linux Mint 17?

I've successfully installed NVM and Node using official instructions. My .bashrc file contains [ -s "/home/user/.nvm/nvm.sh" ] && . "/home/user/.nvm/nvm.sh" After some time, maybe a day, I noticed that Node is not present anymore . So I tried: $ nvm use 0.10 N/A version is not installed yet That's weird, I know that I installed it with nvm install 0.10 , used it to run a script, and found it here: $ ls .nvm/v0.10.29/ bin ChangeLog include lib LICENSE README.md share So, everything looks right, but NVM simply doesn't work: $ nvm install 0.10 mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/etc/mdm/bin’: Permission denied Binary download failed, trying source. Additional options while compiling: mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/etc/mdm/src’: Permission denied nvm: install v0.10.29 failed! $ nvm deactivate Could not find /etc/mdm/*/bin in $PATH Could not find /etc/mdm/*/share/man in $MANPATH Could not find /etc/mdm/*/lib/node_modules in $NODE_PATH Output shows that nvm is trying to use /etc/mdm/* dir, and this doesn't make any sense. MDM is display manager in Linux Mint. Any ideas ? UPDATE: just checked now, seems that $NVM_DIR is set to /etc/mdm. That's probably why everything fails, but don't know when this get set, or why. UPDATE 2(FIX): export NVM_DIR=/home/user/.nvm will fix this problem.