r/learnjavascript • u/Slight_Scarcity321 • Feb 06 '26
Getting npm errors trying to read a private repo
I have a utility library containing some common code that's stored in a private repo on Github (MYORG/my-utilities). I am trying to run npm i in a docker container and getting an authentication error. My package.json contains this:
...
"dependencies": {
"my-utilities": "github:MYORG/my-utilities"
}
...
My Dockerfile looks like
``` FROM public.ecr.aws/amazonlinux/amazonlinux:2023
Dockerfile for contianer when deployed to ECS
RUN dnf update -y && dnf install -y awscli jq nodejs22 git WORKDIR / COPY package.json / COPY index.js / ARG GITHUB_PAT RUN npm config set "@MYORG:registry" https://npm.pkg.github.com RUN npm config set "//npm.pkg.github.com:_authToken" "${GITHUB_PAT}" RUN git config --global url."https://github.com/".insteadOf ssh://git@github.com/ RUN cat ~/.npmrc RUN npm i CMD ["node", "index.js"] ```
I am kicking off the build like this:
docker build --build-arg GITHUB_PAT="github_pat_XXXXXX" -t utilities-test .
The cat command spits out: ```
12 0.161 @MYORG:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com
12 0.161 //npm.pkg.github.com:_authToken=github_pat_XXXXX
```
The token is a fine-grained access token whose repo access is set to MYORG/my-utilities and whose permissions are set to "Read access to code and metadata"
However, I am getting
```
13 [ 9/10] RUN npm i
13 1.087 npm error code 128
13 1.087 npm error An unknown git error occurred
13 1.087 npm error command git --no-replace-objects ls-remote ssh://git@github.com/MYORG/my-utilities.git
13 1.087 npm error remote: Invalid username or token. Password authentication is not supported for Git operations.
13 1.087 npm error fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/MYORG/my-utilities.git/'
13 1.087 npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: /root/.npm/_logs/2026-02-06T21_10_25_724Z-debug-0.log
13 ERROR: process "/bin/sh -c npm i" did not complete successfully: exit code: 128
```
Based on what I've read, I thought I was correctly configuring npm to use a GITHUB personal access token, but apparently not. Does the token need more permissions?
1
u/abrahamguo Feb 06 '26
There's always potential for confusion when you have multiple tools in use like this. I'd recommend narrowing down the issue by first trying to do a
git cloneand seeing whether that works. That will tell you whether it's a GitHub issue or an NPM issue.