Jeffrey,
To run node-red on the AEP Conduit you should use /etc/init.d/node-red start/stop. The node-red-pi program is for running it on a raspberry pi or similar Linux system. Due to a lot of different constraints, Node-RED on Conduit runs Node-RED with a different set of arguments than node-red-pi.
Also, when you are starting Node-RED with node-red-pi, the ports already in use error probably means that there is an instance of Node-RED running already.
For the getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND errors, can you do an nslookup on registry.npmjs.org and get a result like the following?
`# nslookup registry.npmjs.org
Server: 205.171.3.65
Address 1: 205.171.3.65 resolver.qwest.net
Name: registry.npmjs.org
Address 1: 151.101.48.162′
Jeff