cli: [Bug]: Ngrok "Failed to start the tunnel"

Please confirm that you have:

Searched existing issues to see if your issue is a duplicate. (If you’ve found a duplicate issue, feel free to add additional information in a comment on it.)
Reproduced the issue in the latest CLI version.

In which of these areas are you experiencing a problem?

App, Extension, Theme

Expected behavior

Be able to start ngrok tunnel after running through steps to create a Node.js app

Actual behavior

Throwing an error on yarn dev and erroring out.

Stack trace

/Users/robert/Desktop/usrx-custom-app/us-rx/node_modules/yoga-layout-prebuilt/yoga-layout/build/Release/nbind.js:53
        throw ex;
        ^

Error: failed to start the tunnel
    at connectRetry (/Users/robert/Desktop/usrx-custom-app/us-rx/node_modules/@shopify/ngrok/index.js:45:11)
    at async /Users/robert/Desktop/usrx-custom-app/us-rx/node_modules/@shopify/ngrok/index.js:30:17

Node.js v18.9.1
error Command failed with exit code 7.

Reproduction steps

Complete setup instructions per terminal
Run yarn dev

Operating System

Mac OS Monterey

Shopify CLI version (check your project’s `package.json` if you’re not sure)

3.37.0

Shell

bash

Node version (run `node -v` if you’re not sure)

v18.9.1

What language and version are you using in your application?

Node v18.9.1

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created a year ago
Comments: 27 (8 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

I went to

/project/node_modules/@shopify/ngrok/src/client.js

and went into the function that starts the tunnel and realized the package was throwing an error if ngrok didn’t connect in first 10 tries

async function connectRetry(opts, retryCount = 0) {
  if (!processUrl || !ngrokClient) {
    return;
  }
  opts.name = String(opts.name || uuid.v4());
  const response = await ngrokClient.startTunnel(opts);
  if (response) {
    return response.public_url;
  }
  if (retryCount >= 10) { // this will throw error if retires goes more than 10  so I just changed it to 20 
    throw new Error('failed to start the tunnel');
  }
  await sleep(0.2);
  return connectRetry(opts, ++retryCount);
}

so I changed the retryCount to 20 and it worked

Hope it helps in debugging

sachinnair26 on Feb 5, 2023

My temporary solution (replace 8898 with anything you want) (inspired by @hmthang96 comment):

$ ngrok http 8898 → copy https url, for example https://2156-37-122-170-60.ngrok.io
In another terminal tab: $ pnpm run dev --tunnel-url "https://2156-37-122-170-60.ngrok.io:8988" --theme-app-extension-port=8988
Done

iserdmi on Feb 22, 2023

@Tomtom1410 @joeainsworth , this is a different issue, related with cloudflare not ngrok. Could you open a new issue so that we can track it properly? Please include as much info as possible: OS, terminal, node version, and if possible, run the same command with --verbose and attach the output.

isaacroldan on May 31, 2023

Seems like the cloudflared binary is crashing trying to create the tunnel connection 🤔 Does it happen always?

Could you try to run cloudflared in a separate terminal to see if it works?

Find the cloudflared binary in your node modules folder. Is usually at ./node_modules/@shopify/plugin-cloudflare/bin/cloudflared (if you can’t find it you can also install cloudflared globally, instructions here)

run it with: cloudflared --url http://localhost:3000

It should print a URL and a message like INF Registered tunnel connection. If that works but the Shopify CLI doesn’t, you can use that URL with dev like:
pnpm shopify dev --tunnel-url {cloudflare_url}:3000
Let me know how it goes 😃

Hi there, I init a shopify app and run it, but i have an error, so i can’t run my project, I use latest CLI 3.46.0. Can you have me resolve it? I also tried with cloudflered, but it still doesn’t work This is my error:

npm run dev => error

Tomtom1410 on May 26, 2023

Hi @usrx-rob have you tried to kill any potentially running ngrok process wth killall ngrok and running dev again?

matteodepalo on Jan 26, 2023