[BUG] npm install will randomly hang forever and cannot be closed when this occurs

[Metritutus]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

This issue exists in the latest npm version

• I am using the latest npm

Current Behavior

When running npm install it will sometimes hang at a random point. When it does this, it is stuck forever. CTRL+C will do nothing the first time that combination is pressed when this has occurred. Pressing that key combination the second time will make the current line (the one showing the little progress bar) disappear but that's it. No further responses to that key combination are observed.

The CMD (or Powershell) window cannot be closed regardless. The process cannot be killed by Task Manager either (Access Denied, although I'm an Administrator user so I'd assume the real reason is something non-permissions related). The only way I have found to close it is to reboot the machine.

My suspicion is it's some sort of deadlock, but this is a guess and I have no idea how to further investigate this. I've tried using Process Explorer to check for handles to files in the project directory from other processes but there are none. There are handles held by the Node process npm is using, and one for the CMD window hosting it, but that's it.

Even running with log-level silly yields no useful information. When it freezes there are no warnings or errors, it just sits on the line it was on. This is some log output from one of the times when it got stuck (I should again emphasise that the point where it gets stuck seems to be random, so the last line shown here isn't always the one it freezes on):

npm timing auditReport:init Completed in 49242ms
npm timing reify:audit Completed in 55729ms
npm timing reifyNode:node_modules/selenium-webdriver Completed in 54728ms
npm timing reifyNode:node_modules/regenerate-unicode-properties Completed in 55637ms
npm timing reifyNode:node_modules/ajv-formats/node_modules/ajv Completed in 56497ms
npm timing reifyNode:node_modules/@angular-devkit/schematics/node_modules/ajv Completed in 56472ms
[##################] \ reify:ajv: timing reifyNode:node_modules/@angular-devkit/schematics/node_modules/ajv Completed in 564

The only thing that I can think of right now is that Bit Defender (the only other application running) is interfering somehow, however it's the one application I can't turn off.

I've seen this issue occur on different projects, on different network and internet connections, and on different machines. Does anyone have any advice on how to investigate this, or at the very least a way to kill the process when it hangs like this without having to reboot the machine? Being forced to reboot when this issue occurs is perhaps the most frustrating thing in all of this.

Expected Behavior

npm install should either succeed or show an error. If it gets stuck it should either time-out or be closable by the user.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Clear down the node_modules folder (ie with something like rmdir /q /s)
2. Run. npm install
3. Watch and wait.
4. If it succeeds, repeat the above steps until the freeze is observed.

Environment

• npm: 8.1.3
• Node: v16.13.0
• OS: Windows 10 Version 21H1 (OS Build 19043.1288)
• platform: Lenovo ThinkPad
• npm config:

; "builtin" config from C:\Users\<REDACTED>\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\npmrc

prefix = "C:\\Users\\<REDACTED>\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm"

; "user" config from C:\Users\<REDACTED>\.npmrc

//pkgs.dev.azure.com/<REDACTED>/_packaging/<REDACTED>/npm/registry/:_authToken = (protected)

; node bin location = C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe
; cwd = C:\Users\<REDACTED>
; HOME = C:\Users\<REDACTED>
; Run `npm config ls -l` to show all defaults.

[Bizzle-Dapp]

If there was ever a linked example on "How to report an issue", this would probably be it.

[LegendaryMediaTV]

I was getting this error last night. It seemed as though all NPM operations were going slow and/or hanging. I tried reinstalling Node/NPM/etc. Not sure if it's related, but last night I also noticed that the NPM site was taking a while to pull up.

It finally seemed to clear itself up about an hour ago and everything has been working for me since. I'm guessing it was something server-side, though NPM's status page doesn't show anything as of yet.

[Metritutus]

I was getting this error last night. It seemed as though all NPM operations were going slow and/or hanging. I tried reinstalling Node/NPM/etc. Not sure if it's related, but last night I also noticed that the NPM site was taking a while to pull up.

It finally seemed to clear itself up about an hour ago and everything has been working for me since. I'm guessing it was something server-side, though NPM's status page doesn't show anything as of yet.

I'm not sure if that's the same thing. If it were network connection related, I'd assume it would time out at some point. I'd certainly expect to be able to cancel out of the process.

[LegendaryMediaTV]

I'm not sure if that's the same thing. If it were network connection related, I'd assume it would time out at some point. I'd certainly expect to be able to cancel out of the process.

I would have expected a network connection timeout too, but I waited well over an hour (for things that normally take a minute or less) and the process just sat frozen with a partial progress bar. I was, however, able to cancel out of the process on Windows Terminal, which seems to be the only difference.

I even tried a different machine with a different version of Node/NPM (on a different network in a different city) during that time and it had similar issues (i.e., taking a couple minutes to run npm outdated which normally takes a few seconds), but I didn't actually try an install.

[danmana]

I've been having the same problem once in a while: npm install is stuck and I can't cancel the process.

For the last few months, this happened rarely, and when it happened I had to restart my laptop to get it working again.

Last week I updated Node from 14 to 16, and npm from 6 to 8. Everything seemed fine until today...

However, today I can't get npm install to finish, not even once.
I've tried restarting my laptop about a dozen times, but it doesn't help.
I've tried npm cache clear --force and deleting node_modules - nothing helps.

I tried npm install --verbose, but I don't get any more info than this:

npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/@types/lodash/-/lodash-4.14.168.tgz 38952ms (cache miss)
npm timing reifyNode:node_modules/@sealsystems/mongo/node_modules/@types/lodash Completed in 45927ms
npm timing reifyNode:node_modules/@sealsystems/assert-mongo-error/node_modules/@types/lodash Completed in 45946ms

Note: it's not always the same dependency that it gets stuck at.

What I've found that seems strange is that as it fetches dependencies it starts getting progressively slower, until it gets stuck (when the timing gets about 30-45 seconds).
Here are some lines from the logs (the lines are in order, but I skipped a lot of them in between)

npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/figures 216ms (cache miss)
npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/has-symbols/-/has-symbols-1.0.2.tgz 6802ms (cache miss)
npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/p-locate/-/p-locate-2.0.0.tgz 9951ms (cache miss)
npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/decamelize-keys/-/decamelize-keys-1.1.0.tgz 11129ms (cache miss)
npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/function-bind/-/function-bind-1.1.1.tgz 18008ms (cache miss)
npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/@types/stringify-object/-/stringify-object-3.3.0.tgz 26988ms (cache miss)
npm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/@types/lodash/-/lodash-4.14.168.tgz 38952ms (cache miss)

Maybe relevant - I have a few private scoped packages configured in npmrc

@myprivatescope:registry = "https://npm.pkg.github.com/"
//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=ghp_***

though it doesn't seem to get stuck on them

npm http fetch GET 200 https://npm.pkg.github.com/@myprivatescope%2fconsul 515ms (cache miss)

I've tried setting npm config set registry http://registry.npmjs.org/, it seems to move a bit faster in the beginning, but still ends up stuck.

It seems today is not a good day for developing 😢

Windows 10 21H1 build 19043.1348
Node: v16.13.0
NPM: tried with 8.1.3, 8.1.4, 7.19.1 none work
Bitdefender Endpoint Security tools 7.2.2.101 (not sure if this is the issue)

Edit: tried uninstalling node completely, cleaning everything up and reinstalling, but it didn't work ... still stuck

[danmana]

After trying all day to reinstall and make npm work I ended up:

1. installing Ubuntu WSL
2. installing node in ubuntu
3. Copying my settings to ~/.npmrc

This actually worked, although slowly, it never got stuck npm timing reify Completed in 315565ms

I have no idea why even after purging every reference to node or npm from my laptop and doing a fresh install, it still didn't work on Windows.

[CFT-Chris]

I've been running into this as well. Happens on reifyNode in the npm output.

npm is latest version (8.3)
platform is ubuntu 21.10

I did just recently update from npm 6.x to latest. One thing I note is the warning message saying package-lock.json is out of date and needs to be rewritten (one-time operation).

For smaller projects, it squeaks by but only after many periods of CPU lock ups and spending more time than it used to with npm version 6.x.

For bigger projects, the only new observation I can add is that the number of node processes running simultaneously explodes, and they are all hogging the CPU and memory. So now memory swap processes enter the mix and the whole computer grinds to a halt.

Eventually I have to killall node if the computer isn't completely locked up, otherwise I have to do a hard reset. I still haven't succeeded to complete the "npm install" on larger projects.

[bernwong]

I'm having a similar issue after upgrading to node 16.13.1 and npm 8.3.0 (running on centos 7)
As others have mentioned, "npm install" gets progressively slower on the fetches to a point where it completely hangs.

After I downgraded npm back to version 6.14.15 ( npm install -g npm@6 ), the "npm install" completes quickly and successfully.

[CFT-Chris]

With 8.3.0, I got by installing all the dependencies of my larger projects by running npm install in small subsets of said dependencies, until all were installed.

It appears if you try to install multiple large dependencies at once, there is a greater probability of parallel npm install processes of the subdependencies causing an out-of-memory condition on the computer, which I eventually had to kill in order to gain control of the computer again.

[tekumara]

In my case it was network related. I had a private registry in npm config and I wasn't on the VPN to access it.

[darkartswizard]

Seeing this as well on a Mac.
Might be network dropouts.
EDIT: Downgraded to 6.14.15
Restarted machine, cleared cache, removed all packages, deleted node_modules, deleted package-lock.
Then we started putting Dependancies and devDependancies packages back a few at a time.
Eventually got it to build without error.

[begroff]

I am getting this error as well on a windows PC using the command prompt (cmd.exe). I've tried the following combinations and was able to reproduce the stuckness each time (I was using nvm for windows to switch versions):

node v16.13.1 / npm 8.1.2
node v17.2.0 / npm 8.1.4
node 16.10.0 / npm 7.24.0

I do have AV Defender installed, which I can't disable due to it being a company installed anti-virus software. I was also running Fiddler4 and haven't seen any HTTP errors related.

I then switched to a git bash terminal and was able to run npm install 3 times with version 16.13.1/8.1.2 and no hangs. I also ran npm ci 3 times with no hangs.

My git version installed on windows was 2.17.1.windows.2.