Why is npm giving 500 and 503 errors: “registry error parsing json”?

Question

Trying to do npm install steroids -g and running into lots of errors of two types:

First: 500

npm ERR! registry error p         


        

Answer 1

npm has a status page where any server incidence will (should) be reflected:

https://status.npmjs.org

Answer 2

From @npmjs around 15mins after your question was made:

"aware of the outage. please be patient. working to resolve this now."

On side note, read Node Roundup: Surviving npm Downtime, Waf Wall of Shame, stream-chat, Vein, interest info about NPM mirrors. Kinda outdated (2012) but now you know it has mirrors ;-)

Also, a good advice by 'mark' at the comments of this blogpost I linked:

If you're relying on NPM for production deployments, STOP! Make sure you set specific versions and clone them in your private repo. Deploy from your private repo not the NPM registry. You have been warned. Relying on NPM for production deployment scripts has bitten us twice! The first was because a library author deleted an old version of his library we depended on. This time it was the NPM registry itself.

Answer 3

Try using a mirror for example the european mirror:

npm --registry http://registry.npmjs.eu/ install karma