AWS node.js SDK error - SignatureDoesNotMatch: Signature expired - node.js

Question

Node.js version 0.10.25
AWS SDK Version latest - 2.0.23
I have an app that is continuously listening to a Queue (SQS) and if there are messages posted in that queue the app will read the message and process it and save some data to S3. When I start the app after about 20 minutes I am getting the following error continuously.
Potentially unhandled rejection [160] SignatureDoesNotMatch: Signature expired: 20141104T062952Z is now earlier than 20141104T062952Z (20141104T064452Z - 15 min.)
at Request.extractError (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/protocol/query.js:39:29)
at Request.callListeners (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/sequential_executor.js:100:18)
at Request.emit (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/sequential_executor.js:77:10)
at Request.emit (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/request.js:604:14)
at Request.transition (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/request.js:21:12)
at AcceptorStateMachine.runTo (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/state_machine.js:14:12)
at /myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/state_machine.js:26:10
at Request.<anonymous> (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/request.js:22:9)
at Request.<anonymous> (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/request.js:606:12)
at Request.callListeners (/myproject/node_modules/aws-sdk/lib/sequential_executor.js:104:18)
It is not an issue with my system time. My system time is in sync with the time of my EC2 instance. Why am I getting this error? Is it related to SQS or S3?

Answer 1

I know this is an old question, but I experienced it myself today.
Fortunately, and the AWS NodeJS SDK now has this configuration option called correctClockSkew, which will fix the system clock offset once an error occurs:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/Config.html#correctClockSkew-property

Answer 2

It's likely the time on your computer is incorrect
The signature mismatch is because authentication process depends on clock syncronisation.
Check the time on your machine.
On Linux / WSL you can run sudo hwclock -s to fix. Other OSs will require different commands.

Answer 3

Thanks to Loren Segal (Amazon) for his quick response. Refer https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues/401 for more details. In short, the SDK is not retrying signature errors for which the work around is
AWS.events.on('retry', function(resp) {
if (resp.error.code === 'SignatureDoesNotMatch') {
resp.error.retryable = true;
}
});
This is not a regression i.e, it is not a bug introduced in 2.0.23