Installation of NPM packages failed with "npm notice Access token expired or revoked. Please try logging in again."

[Vectorial1024]

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Bug

Body

Running npm install on a repository failed. The error chain started with this message:

npm notice Access token expired or revoked. Please try logging in again.

Using NPM v11.6.2.

How do I fix this problem?

---

I have noticed that NPM recently changed their token security strategy. However, I would expect this to have nothing to do with read-only actions like npm install.

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[mecodeatlas]

Hey @Vectorial1024! Thanks for reaching out 👋

This behavior is expected after recent npm security updates. As part of these changes, npm access tokens stored in your local .npmrc now expire after 2 hours. When the token expires, commands like npm install will fail with the message “Access token expired or revoked”, even for read-only operations.

To fix this, simply re-authenticate and try again:

npm login

or

npm adduser

Once logged in again, npm install should work as expected.

Hope it helps!

[ajayverma-cml]

If you no need of "npm login" then,
Just remove this file "~/.npmrc" using -
"sudo rm ~/.npmrc"

It's worked for me.

[rishabh-wayone]

export NODE_OPTIONS=--dns-result-order=ipv4first
npm view @typescript-eslint/tsconfig-utils version

8.50.0 ✅

[rishabh-wayone]

Fixed

[Ritik1330]

Fix that worked for me

The issue was caused by a stale npm proxy config (even though it showed null).

This fixed it:

npm config delete proxy
npm config delete https-proxy

Optional

npm login
npm install

After removing the proxy, npm was able to refresh the token correctly.

Thanks to @HarshBytesCode for the network/DNS hint.

[helloupendra]

Work for me - https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/181951#discussioncomment-15297577

[jakedmarcotte]

What about when this is on a CI/CD pipeline?

We are simply making the granular token for our Gitlab pipeline and setting like so... and we get the error message from this ticket.

  script:
    - npm config set //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken ${NPM_TOKEN}
    - cd backend && npm i