[BUG] Sometimes package can't be downloaded from the public NPM registry

[alexander-stepanov]

What / Why

I've recently noticed that some (older?) versions of packages could not be loaded from the public NPM registry sometimes.
For example, p-is-promise@1.0.0 install may return 404 error, which I've traced to the direct curl call:
curl https://registry.npmjs.org/p-is-promise/-/p-is-promise-1.0.0.tgz
When it fails, the returned XML is like:

<Error>
<Code>NoSuchBucket</Code>
<Message>The specified bucket does not exist</Message>
<BucketName>npm-registry-packages</BucketName>
<RequestId>3FE1EB29A1CDEC05</RequestId>
<HostId>
AtjEeC/rUKANywkX7JdUrlh4DiyYbyiH9B8UzauOUmNwuDkAkiw3o0IKa46kpOjH+9dRGSUS4KQ=
</HostId>
</Error>

When

Noticed it today, 2019-11-19.

Where

npm public registry

How

Current Behavior

The issue seems to be a floating bug, it only fails sometimes.

Steps to Reproduce

npm i p-is-promise@1.0.0
or
curl https://registry.npmjs.org/p-is-promise/-/p-is-promise-1.0.0.tgz

Expected Behavior

npm i p-is-promise@1.0.0 should always work.

Who

n/a

References

May be related to (or causing) yarnpkg/yarn#7691

[darcyclarke]

npm v6 is no longer in active development; We will continue to push security releases to v6 at our team's discretion as-per our Support Policy.

If your bug is preproducible on v7, please re-file this issue using our new issue template.

If your issue was a feature request, please consider opening a new RRFC or RFC. If your issue was a question or other idea that was not CLI-specific, consider opening a discussion on our feedback repo

Closing: This is an automated message.