Cb() never called in Meteor 1.8.1

I keep getting this no matter what I do when i run meteor npm install, or try to install the packages suggested when just running the meteor command.

OS Ubuntu 18.04 Linux 64 bit
Meteor Version : 1.8.1 (wanting to upgrade)

I’ve tried deleting the package-lock.json and the node_modules folder, and re-running, and this did not help.

I also tried something I found on another thread from a while back which was make sure the npm proxy is removed, and npm http-proxy is removed - also didn’t work for this issue.

Any help, or a point to the answer is much appreciated.

npm ERR! cb() never called!

npm ERR! This is an error with npm itself. Please report this error at:
npm ERR!     <https://npm.community>

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/brian/.npm/_logs/2020-03-02T21_59_17_349Z-debug.log
brian@brian-dell-main:~/hostUp$ meteor --version

Log info

2159 silly extract meteor-node-stubs@^0.3.2 extracted to /home/brian/hostUp/node_modules/.staging/meteor-node-stubs-7a0a6529 (829ms)
2160 silly extract highcharts@^6.2.0 extracted to /home/brian/hostUp/node_modules/.staging/highcharts-d5a420f0 (1180ms)
2161 timing npm Completed in 5376ms
2162 error cb() never called!
2163 error This is an error with npm itself. Please report this error at:
2164 error <https://npm.community>