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

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.