[BUG] Getting constant `FetchError...reason: Socket timeout` when installing packages

[ruluva]

Current Behavior:

When trying to install packages, without a previous cache, we get constant timeouts when trying to fetch packages, both locally and in a CI environment. The package that fails is always different, so there isn't a specific package causing the issue.

Stack trace:

19505 verbose stack FetchError: request to https://.../npm/registry/typescript/-/typescript-4.1.3.tgz failed, reason: Socket timeout
19505 verbose stack     at ClientRequest.<anonymous> (C:\npm\prefix\node_modules\npm\node_modules\minipass-fetch\lib\index.js:97:14)
19505 verbose stack     at ClientRequest.emit (events.js:315:20)
19505 verbose stack     at TLSSocket.socketErrorListener (_http_client.js:469:9)
19505 verbose stack     at TLSSocket.emit (events.js:327:22)
19505 verbose stack     at emitErrorNT (internal/streams/destroy.js:106:8)
19505 verbose stack     at emitErrorCloseNT (internal/streams/destroy.js:74:3)
19505 verbose stack     at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:80:21)
19506 verbose cwd D:\a\1\s
19507 verbose Windows_NT 10.0.17763
19508 verbose argv "C:\\hostedtoolcache\\windows\\node\\14.15.4\\x64\\node.exe" "C:\\npm\\prefix\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js" "ci" "--no-audit"
19509 verbose node v14.15.4
19510 verbose npm  v7.9.0
19511 error code ERR_SOCKET_TIMEOUT
19512 error errno ERR_SOCKET_TIMEOUT
19513 error request to https://.../npm/registry/typescript/-/typescript-4.1.3.tgz failed, reason: Socket timeout
19514 verbose exit 1

Tried using the fetch-retries, fetch-retry-mintimeout, and fetch-retry-maxtimeout options, but didn't seem to have any effect.

Expected Behavior:

Install packages without timing out.

Steps To Reproduce:

Using a project with workspaces (~6425 packages)
No cache available
Run npm ci

Environment:

OS: Mac OS 11.2.3 or Windows 10
Node: 14.15.4
npm: 7.9.0

[nlf]

judging by the path in your issue, i'm guessing that you are using a custom registry and not the npm one?

these socket timeouts seem like an issue with either your registry itself or the network connection between the computer you're installing packages on and your registry host. if you can, you might try installing some packages using the official npm registry just to see if you continue to have issues. if something like npm install react --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org in an empty directory still shows you socket timeout errors it seems likely the problem is with your computer. if not, sounds like it's an issue with your custom registry.

let us know what you find!

[ruluva]

Yeah, this is going through a custom Visual Studio registry. And it has been an issue on most of the machines from the team as well as the build pipelines. I can try to repro it with the npmjs registry, but it seems to only occur on bigger projects, since I didn't face the issue on a smaller one during testing.

[nlf]

you might try experimenting with the --maxsockets option too, the default is 15 but it could be you need to reduce it a bit further.

[ruluva]

So reducing might help with this issue? Is this because it might overloading it?

[nlf]

yeah, that's what i'm thinking. potentially reducing the number of concurrent requests will give the registry a better chance at handling them. it could be reducing that number enough will avoid the timeouts entirely. it's certainly worth a try, anyway.

[ruluva]

Sounds good, let me play around with a couple different values, and I'll post any results.