ECONNRESET connecting to Firebase auth emulator from functions emulator with grpc imported

[danielparks]

[READ] Step 1: Are you in the right place?

I’m not sure that the root cause of this issue is, but this repo seems like the most likely culprit. Other possibilities: gRPC, firebase-tools, firebase-functions.

[REQUIRED] Step 2: Describe your environment

• Operating System version: macOS 15.7.4 (24G517)
• Firebase SDK version: 7.4.0
• Firebase Product: auth
• Python version: 3.11.15
• Pip version: uv 0.11.6

[REQUIRED] Step 3: Describe the problem

Steps to reproduce:

danielparks/firebase-emulator-auth-hang-up is minimal test repo with more exhaustive details including a workaround.

Within a Python cloud function that has grpc or firebase_admin.firestore imported, call an auth method, e.g. auth.create_user(...), or make a GET request to the auth endpoint, e.g. requests.get("http://127.0.0.1:9099/", timeout=1).

The function will fail with ECONNRESET (“Error: socket hang up”).

Relevant Code:

Simplified example (see the repo above for a functional example):

from firebase_admin import initialize_app
from firebase_functions import https_fn
import requests

import grpc
# or, import firebase_admin.firestore

initialize_app()

@https_fn.on_call()
def connect(req):
    # Make a simple GET request to the auth emulator endpoint:
    return repr(requests.get("http://127.0.0.1:9099/", timeout=1))

[bryancalisto]

Similar thing here. This code fails in auth.verify_id_token (there's not something explicitly telling that it failed. I just never see the print('4')) when calling process_stuff through firebase emulators:start --only functions and get the error below:

from firebase_admin import auth, initialize_app, firestore
from firebase_functions import https_fn
from loguru import logger
import os
from functools import wraps
import base64
import json
from datetime import datetime, timezone
from fn_impl.utils import ConsumablesError, Entity
from firebase_functions.params import SecretParam


def authenticate(f):
    @wraps(f)
    def decorated_function(req: https_fn.Request, *args, **kwargs):
        print('1')
        auth_header = req.headers.get('Authorization')
        if not auth_header or not auth_header.startswith('Bearer '):
            return https_fn.Response(
                "Invalid credentials",
                status=401
            )

        print('2')

        try:
            id_token = auth_header.split('Bearer ')[1]
            print('3')
            decoded_token = auth.verify_id_token(id_token)
            print('4')

            req.user = decoded_token
        except Exception as e:
            logger.error(f"Authentication failed: Unexpected error: {e}")
            return https_fn.Response(
                "Error verifying credentials",
                status=401
            )

        return f(req, *args, **kwargs)
    return decorated_function

@https_fn.on_request()
@authenticate
def process_stuff(req: https_fn.Request):
...

ERRORS:

>  objc[60961]: +[NSNumber initialize] may have been in progress in another thread when fork() was called.
>  objc[60961]: +[NSNumber initialize] may have been in progress in another thread when fork() was called. We cannot safely call it or ignore it in the fork() child process. Crashing instead. Set a breakpoint on objc_initializeAfterForkError to debug.
i  Request to function failed: Error: read ECONNRESET
>  [2026-05-15 18:57:32 +0000] [60960] [ERROR] Worker (pid:60961) was sent SIGKILL! Perhaps out of memory?

I guess it's not memory related as there's more than 7 GB of free memory when the error triggers.

I got the ECONNRESET (“Error: socket hang up”) a couple of times too, but not sure with which version of firebase-admin it was as I was testing with 7.2.0 and 7.0.4 .

My requirements.txt looks like

firebase-admin==7.4.0
firebase-functions==0.5.0
loguru==0.7.3

firebase-tools version is 15.18.0

Python version is 3.11.14.

My system runs macos Tahoe 26.3.1 (M4).