I can't make any search with npm:
npm search material
..results with the following error:
npm WARN Building the local index for the first time, please be patient
FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory
I tried with the following command
npm --max_old_space_size=16384 search material
but I had the same result.
npm version is 3.10.3
According to npm's bug tracker, this has been fixed in npm@4.0.0. (see thread).
Searching works fine for me after upgrading npm:
(you might need to su/sudo on your system)