[BUG] npm ERR! Exit handler never called during npm install

[princee07]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

This issue exists in the latest npm version

• I am using the latest npm

Current Behavior

When running npm install inside my project, npm crashes with the following error:

npm ERR! Exit handler never called!
npm ERR! This is an error with npm itself.

A complete log of this run can be found in:
C:\Users\HP\AppData\Local\npm-cache_logs\2026-05-21T13_55_44_768Z-debug-0.log

The installation stops immediately and dependencies are not installed.

Expected Behavior

npm install should install all dependencies successfully without crashing.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Open PowerShell
2. Navigate to the project directory
3. Run:
   npm install
4. npm crashes with "Exit handler never called"

Environment

node -v
npm -v

[bhadraagada]

yea dude im trying to build using docker-compose and getting these errors for a sec i thought is something wrong with my code or dockerfile

[builder 4/6] RUN npm config set fetch-retries 5 && npm config set fetch-retry-mintimeout 20000 && npm config set fetch-retry-maxtimeout 120000 && npm install --include=dev && test -x node_modules/.bin/vite
npm error Exit handler never called!
npm error This is an error with npm itself. Please report this error at:
npm error <https://github.com/npm/cli/issues>
npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: /root/.npm/_logs/2026-05-21T13_58_39_961Z-debug-0.log

[manzoorwanijk]

A complete log of this run can be found in:
C:\Users\HP\AppData\Local\npm-cache_logs\2026-05-21T13_55_44_768Z-debug-0.log

Do you mind sharing that error log here?

[bhadraagada]

this i havere-produced using my machine locally. The Docker run from the Docker and I couldn't salvage the doc file so I did it locally again.

2026-05-21T14_36_10_445Z-debug-0.log

[bhadraagada]

Yes. Useful bits from the log:

It reproduced on npm 10.8.2 + Node v20.20.2:

info using npm@10.8.2
info using node@v20.20.2

Command was clean and isolated:

npm ci --include dev --no-audit --no-fund --cache ... --logs-dir ... --timing

The real trigger looks like registry timeouts, not package corruption:

http fetch GET https://registry.npmjs.org/ws/-/ws-8.19.0.tgz attempt 3 failed with ETIMEDOUT
http fetch GET https://registry.npmjs.org/yargs/-/yargs-17.7.2.tgz attempt 3 failed with ETIMEDOUT
...

The npm bug is the ending:

error Exit handler never called!
verbose exit 0
info ok

That last part is the strongest thing to report: after repeated ETIMEDOUT fetch failures, npm reports an internal fatal error but exits with status 0 / info ok. That explains the Docker behavior: dependency install silently “succeeded,” then vite was missing later.

I’d frame the npm issue as:

npm ci with npm 10.8.2 can emit Exit handler never called! after registry ETIMEDOUT failures but still exits 0, leaving node_modules incomplete. This causes downstream build steps to fail instead of the install step failing correctly.

[bhadraagada]

@manzoorwanijk @owlstronaut