NPM install is crashing with error "ERR! cb() never called!"

Question

We are periodically seeing builds fail within our cloud build process with the following error:

docker.io/library/node:14 npm ERR! cb() never called!

npm ERR! This is an error with npm itself. Please report this error at: npm ERR! https://npm.community

Steps from build configuration:

steps:
  - name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/git'
    id: 'fetch'
    entrypoint: 'bash'
    args:
      - '-c'
      - |
        # convert the shallow clone to regular one
        git fetch --unshallow --no-tags
    waitFor: ['-']

  - name: 'node:14'
    id: 'npm-install'
    entrypoint: 'bash'
    args:
      - '-c'
      - |
        npm ci --unsafe-perm
    env:
      - 'CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY=0'
      - 'CYPRESS_CACHE_FOLDER=/cypress_cache'
    waitFor: ['fetch']

Any thoughts on things to try or to remediate this issue?

EDIT: All packages are installed from npm.

What hosts the npm registry, from where the packages are installed? — Milan Tenk, Sep 23 '21 at 17:51
Does this happen only occasionally? Are your npm and Node versions compatible? This is old but may be useful: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15393821/npm-err-cb-never-called?rq=1 — Javier A, Sep 24 '21 at 12:29
@JavierA it happens only occasionally. Yes node / npm version are compatabile as this is the official node:14 docker container — Jesse, Sep 25 '21 at 15:05
Isn't there maybe a company proxy or policy, that somehow sporadically blocks the downloading of a package? — Milan Tenk, Sep 25 '21 at 15:54
@MilanTenk Shouldn't be proxy related. Fresh vm, fresh image and crashes maybe 1 in 20 times? — Jesse, Sep 27 '21 at 00:19
I had a very similar issue in a company environment. In my case it was actually reproducable on developer PC-s as well, if all the cache-es were properly cleaned. (All the cache-es cleaned means in this context followning: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69310464/npm-install-always-uses-artifactory-registry-and-ignores-npmrc-file/69324487#69324487). After a lot of meetings with different supports we actually did not make it, to fix the issue, as a workaround we built in a retry logic: if the `npm install` fails, try it again. This was stable enough. — Milan Tenk, Sep 27 '21 at 16:14
Are you still experiencing the same issue? Did you try the @MilanTenk approach? It seems a good idea. — drauedo, Oct 08 '21 at 07:53
@drauedo no we haven't automatically built in a retry step. Essentially what we are doing is manually restarting the build when this happens. — Jesse, Oct 08 '21 at 16:56

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 11 '21 at 08:33

As suggested by @Milan Tenk a good approach would be to implement a retry logic in your build by wrapping your command in a bash script.

Here are some examples on how you can modify you yaml file to a run bash scripts in Cloud Build:

steps:
- name: 'bash'
  args: ['./retryPolicy.bash']

If bash is not the default entrypoint:

steps:
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/gcloud'
  entrypoint: 'bash'
  args: ['tools/retryPolicy.sh','--foo']

And here is an example of a retry logic implementation in bash:

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

function myFunction() {
    myCommand
    return $?
}

retry=0
maxRetries=5
retryInterval=15
until [ ${retry} -ge ${maxRetries} ]
do
    myFunction && break
    retry=$[${retry}+1]
    echo "Retrying [${retry}/${maxRetries}] in ${retryInterval}(s) "
    sleep ${retryInterval}
done

if [ ${retry} -ge ${maxRetries} ]; then
  echo "Failed after ${maxRetries} attempts!"
  exit 1
fi

Please let me know if that approach worked for you.

R. Hoek · Answer 2 · 2021-11-23T11:15:57.463

See NPM CLI WiKi: https://github.com/npm/cli/wiki/%22cb()-never-called%3F-Exit-handler-never-called%3F-I'm-having-the-same-problem!%22

Sadly, there's never a straightforward answer.

However, many people seem to suggest deleting the node_modules folder in your project and also running the command npm cache clean -force.

For me it did not work - so I copied a node_modules folder from a PC, which could run npm install without having the error. This at least allowed to use npm install without errors and build the project again.

NPM install is crashing with error "ERR! cb() never called!"

2 Answers2