test-npm-install.js now requires Internet connection

[joyeecheung]

It seems recently test-npm-install.js started requiring Internet connection (which I think means now running npm install on a package.json with no module to install requires Internet connection somehow). We should either try to make it runnable offline or move it to test/internet. Anyone familiar with the installer know how to make the former possible?

P.S. this causes a TIMEOUT when I am behind the GFW

cc @nodejs/testing

[richardlau]

Cc @nodejs/npm

[ruyadorno]

I'm taking a look and trying to reproduce but running node test/parallel/test-npm-install.js in my machine exits with code 0 and yields no error at all even without any internet connection. I would appreciate if you can point me a way to reliably reproduce it 😊 thanks!

[Trott]

running node test/parallel/test-npm-install.js in my machine exits with code 0 and yields no error at all even without any internet connection. I would appreciate if you can point me a way to reliably reproduce it 😊 thanks!

The GFW almost certainly silently discards packets so turning off your network is not the same thing.

On my macOS laptop, adding this to /etc/hosts seems to do the trick:

127.0.0.2	registry.npmjs.org

I'm not sure if silently dropping packets destined for 127.0.0.2 is expected default behavior everywhere, but you can try that. If that doesn't work, another option is to set up a proxy that silently discards packets.

[ruyadorno]

Thanks @Trott that did it 😊

It turns out there were two requests happening in that test, one reaching out to the registry to retrieve info for the update notifier feature the npm cli provides (GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/npm) and a second one for the audit feature (POST 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/-/npm/v1/security/advisories/bulk).

It does seem like the internal mechanisms in which these features work might have slightly changed from v6 to v7 (which we'll follow up in the npm cli) - given that none of these features seem essential to the purpose of this test I just sent a PR that disables them in #36933