[BUG] `lchown` error when accessing installation lock file when running multiple installations in parallel.

[SimonSchick]

What / Why

NPM fails to due to create(?) locks (not package-lock.json) during installation.

When

• Appears to happen when performing multiple parallel installs.

Where

• https://dev.azure.com/definitelytyped/DefinitelyTyped/_build/results?buildId=24313
• Also occurs locally on MacOS

How

Current Behavior

• Will occassionally fail to lchown npm lock files (not package-lokc.json).

Steps to Reproduce

• See where section.
• It is possible to repro this by performing the following steps:
  • Clone my fork of DT and checkout my branch related to this PR
  • Initialise via npm install
  • Run npm test node

Expected Behavior

• Locking does not failed.

Who

• Unsure

References

• https://github.com/microsoft/types-publisher/issues/707

[sandersn]

Also occurs locally on Linux with the same repro steps, eg

npm ERR! syscall lchown
npm ERR! path /home/nathansa/.npm/_locks/staging-33722a1ecded5100.lock
npm ERR! errno -2
npm ERR! enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, lchown '/home/nathansa/.npm/_locks/staging-33722a1ecded5100.lock'
npm ERR! enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file.

[sandersn]

Seems to happen less when I switch to node 11.0.0 + npm 6.7.0.

[Flarna]

Node 11.0.0 is a really strange version as node 11 is EOL since a while. Maybe try the current LTS 12.13.1? Or it's maybe the older NPM version bundled with node 11 which avoids this.

[sandersn]

Yeah, I was just travelling backward through the versions I have installed until I found a non-problematic version. The older npm version is very likely the variable.

[SimonSchick]

@sandersn maybe perform a manual binary search through versions? 😛

[Cawllec]

Experiencing this bug when using Lerna consistently, which is unfortunately causing issues in our build process.
Error message:

lerna ERR! npm install stderr:
  | npm ERR! code ENOENT
  | npm ERR! syscall lchown
  | npm ERR! path /root/.npm/_locks/staging-3f138bd09ee0de58.lock
  | npm ERR! errno -2
  | npm ERR! enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, lchown '/root/.npm/_locks/staging-3f138bd09ee0de58.lock'
  | npm ERR! enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file.
  | npm ERR! enoent

This is when using the node:latest-alpine docker image, which currently uses the versions:
node: 12.13.1
npm: 6.12.1

[midudev]

I can confirm this is happening to me as well with node v13.2.0 and npm 6.13.4.

Anyone has a temporary fix for this? As it's blocking some of our deployments. :(

[SimonSchick]

@midudev temp mitigation is to not run npm i in parallel or at least drastically reduce concurrency.
When dealing with the DT repo limiting it to 2 parallel installs it reduced the amount of failures by about ~90%.

[midudev]

Thanks @SimonSchick. Yes... Using no concurrency at all seems to fix the problem but the time needed for installing packages is vastly increased. :(

I wonder if the npm team is aware of this problem as this was working fine previously. Of if this is a problem caused because some inner changes on node.

[yavorski]

Hi, we have the same issue.
I am almost sure that this is some kind of race condition issue.

Temporary fix is to downgrade to npm@6.10.1.

I have tested almost every version from 6.10.2 to latest 6.13.6 and the issue is there.
I can confirm the bug is NOT related to the nodejs version, it's just related to npm version.