If you are using NPM for to install your JavaScript modules and you are sitting behind a corporate proxy server with a strict firewall then you will likely be having problems. If NPM cannot find its way out to the web you will likely be getting a timeout error like the one below:
npm ERR! argv “C:\\node.exe” “C:\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\npm-cli.js” “install” “package1”
npm ERR! node v4.2.1
npm ERR! npm v2.14.7
npm ERR! code ETIMEDOUT
npm ERR! errno ETIMEDOUT
npm ERR! syscall connect
npm ERR! network connect ETIMEDOUT 185.31.18.162:443
npm ERR! network This is most likely not a problem with npm itself
npm ERR! network and is related to network connectivity.
npm ERR! network In most cases you are behind a proxy or have bad network settings.
npm ERR! network
npm ERR! network If you are behind a proxy, please make sure that the
npm ERR! network ‘proxy’ config is set properly. See: ‘npm help config’
To resolve this problem you need to tell NPM the address of your web proxy, including the username/password to authenticate, so that it can route outgoing HTTP requests via that proxy. NPM stores its configuration in a config file and can be edited via the console/terminal using “NPM Config” command. Use this command to set set both the HTTP and HTTPS values replacing the username/password and proxy address with your custom values:
npm config set proxy http://username:password@yourproxy.yourcompany.com:8080/
npm config set https-proxy http://username:password@yourproxy.yourcompany.com:8080/
To view the current proxy settings, or to check that your change worked, you can run “npm config get” (as opposed to “npm config set”) to read the settings.
“npm config get proxy”
“npm config get https-proxy”
Alternatively running only “npm config get” will show ALL NPM config settings.
Should you want to remove the npm setting you can do it like this:
“npm config rm proxy””
”npm config rm https-proxy”
For more information checkout the NPM documentation here:https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/config
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