source-built aspnetcore fails during node build on RHEL8

[tmds]

Our builds of aspnetcore on RHEL8 are failing as follows:

  ##vso[task.setvariable variable=NUGET_PLUGIN_REQUEST_TIMEOUT_IN_SECONDS;isSecret=false;isOutput=true]20
  
    Checking node version...
    v10.24.0
    Checking npm version...
    6.14.11
    npm ERR! Cannot read property 'karma-sauce-launcher' of undefined
    
    npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
    npm ERR!     /home/tester/dotnet/src/aspnetcore/src/submodules/Node-Externals/cache/_logs/

From the builds, I see the issue started somewhere mid February.
Build of https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet on Feb 13 (d0f16dfea3a6e7c8fa18051c8d3eac1dbc8b3bde) is passing, and build on Feb 15 (495f8900ad6315711347fb088e622a60e957bc7a) is failing.

We also have CI builds for aspnetcore, but they are not showing the issue. This is probably due to building a different configuration than what the vmr is building.

cc @MichaelSimons @omajid

[mkArtakMSFT]

Thanks for reporting this, @tmds.
This is most probably due to the submodules not being up to date.
Can you please run the following commands (I think I've got them right) and see if that helps (from the root of the repo):

git submodule init
git submodule update

[tmds]

This is most probably due to the submodules not being up to date.

I'm building the vmr, and I don't know if/how it handles the submodules?

There could also be an issue due to the old node version, because we don't see the problem on other OSes in our CI.

[tmds]

I'm building the vmr, and I don't know if/how it handles the submodules?

It seems the vmr has the submodules included as sources: https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet/tree/main/src/aspnetcore/src/submodules

So the issue is not related to submodule initialization.

[wtgodbe]

@javiercn could you take a look here? I'm not sure what this error message implies

[wtgodbe]

FYI, we may be delayed in getting to this due to the 1ES pipeline migration work

[mkArtakMSFT]

Closing this one as we'll tackle this as part of #54541