diff --git a/assets/admin/.npmrc b/assets/admin/.npmrc
index b6f27f13..03505e08 100644
--- a/assets/admin/.npmrc
+++ b/assets/admin/.npmrc
@@ -1 +1,10 @@
+# the package.json in this folder uses a preinstall and postinstall script for symlinking the javascript code of the
+# sulu/sulu package into the node_modules directory: https://github.com/sulu/sulu/blob/2.x/symlink-vendor-directory.js
+# when executing npm as root (eg. inside a docker container), npm will drop permissions when executing these scripts
+# and therefore the symlink cannot be created. to prevent dropping permissions, we enable the "unsafe-perm" setting
+# https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v6/using-npm/scripts#user
+unsafe-perm=true
+
+# the javascript setup in this folder is not compatible with npm 7: https://github.com/sulu/skeleton/issues/88
+# to display a helpful error message if an incompatible version is used, we enable the "engine-strict" setting
 engine-strict=true