ERROR: Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity in Apple Submission Flow

Expo Application Services (EAS)
1

I keep running into error after error with eas submit and I’ve managed to get through all of them but am really stuck on this one. Any ideas welcome.

I’m on a managed workflow
version eas-cli/0.60.0 darwin-arm64 node-v16.17.0

OBSERVED:

[logs] Starting iOS app upload
[logs] Downloading archive
[logs] Preparing artifact
[logs] Creating ascApiJsonKey.json file with ASC credentials
[logs] Uploading iOS app to TestFlight...
[logs] Uploading the app with fastlane pilot
[logs] -------------------
[logs] --- Step: pilot ---
[logs] -------------------
[logs] Creating authorization token for App Store Connect API
[logs] Ready to upload new build to TestFlight (App: 1641010681)...
[logs] Going to upload updated app to App Store Connect
[logs] This might take a few minutes. Please don't interrupt the script.
[logs] Transporter transfer failed.
[logs]
[logs] Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity.
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main> DBG-X:   parameter iTMSTransporterMode = upload
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main>  INFO: id = 20220821144307-683
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main> DEBUG: SMART-CLIENT: getCurrent(); current data center is null
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main> DEBUG: SMART-CLIENT: getCurrent(); iterator was null, setting it
[logs]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main> DEBUG: SMART-CLIENT: getCurrent(); setting current data center to: contentdelivery01.itunes.apple.com
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main>  INFO: iTMSTransporter Correlation Key: 27e30cf2-d3fb-4b65-8c21-d23c6487b14e-0001
[logs]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main> DEBUG: SMART-CLIENT: Host HTTP header: contentdelivery01.itunes.apple.com
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main>  INFO: Apple Correlation Key: HMXJLTLAO7XQJQEUSK557BK6DY
[logs]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main>  INFO: Web service received a server status of: HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main>  INFO: Web service response received: Unauthenticated
[logs]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] Request ID: HMXJLTLAO7XQJQEUSK557BK6DY.0.0
[logs]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main> ERROR: Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity.
[logs]
[logs] [iTMSTransporter] [2022-08-21 14:43:07 PDT] <main> DBG-X: Returning 1
[logs] iTunes Transporter output above ^
[logs] Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity.
[logs] Return status of iTunes Transporter was 1: Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity.
[logs] The call to the iTMSTransporter completed with a non-zero exit status: 1. This indicates a failure.
[logs] [!] Error uploading ipa file:
[logs] Fastlane pilot failed
[logs] Failed to submit the app

So far:

  • I had an error earlier around there being no apiKey available in eas
  • I have a new Apple Store Connect API Key
  • I uploaded that key into the expo project settings for my particular project
  • Once the token was available in eas-cli I downloaded the json formatted credentials.json file and then rebuilt my application and ran eas submit --platform ios
  • The error about no apiKeys being available for my team was absent
  • The submit now fails due to iMSTransporter having a communication issue
  • I have tried 4 times to submit with eas submit due to suggestions in apple forums that this is an intermittent issue, but appears to be consistent

Other thing to note:

  • My applications’ dependencies are in a private npm repo hosted in azure devops, this was causing 401 unauthorized errors on npm install, but has since been resolved after adding a .npmrc file with auth credentials