Nodejs Error: Could not autodetect OpenSSL support

OpenSSL development packages not installed#

So you are ready to install Node on your Ubuntu box and run ./configure, to which you are greeted by a nasty looking error:

Could not autodetect OpenSSL support. Make sure OpenSSL development packages are installed. Use configure --without-ssl to disable this message.

You know damn well OpenSSL is installed on the system, but why is ./configure failing to find it?

./configure is looking for something else (libssl-dev), not openssl. Fixing it is a breeze, just run the command below.

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

You could configure your Node.js installation with --without-ssl to get past the ./configure error, but you will end up without the crypto module - not recommended at all!

Whichever OS you are on, just make sure you have libssl-dev installed.