Axios/Nuxt "Certificate has expired" only when directly opening page, but not for a link from another page

Question

I have a website I am helping to maintain (but did not build myself), using Nuxt.js and Axios. It is currently showing an odd server behavior on the Home page. If I directly visit the home page (say: https://example.org):

• Browser: Server error (500)
• Server: Certificate has expired (for the twitter feed data call)

This error also happens when I am on example.org/about (which works) and hit a link formed like: <a href="/" class="navbar-item logo-text">Home</a>

However, if I visit the home page (both show link as https://example.org) via a link on say example.org/about which is formed like: <a href="/" class="navbar-item nuxt-link-active"><span>Home</span></a>:

• Browser: Page works!
• Server: No errors

So, oddly enough, even for two different links for '/' one leads to the error but the other does not (and they both display the same thing in the URL bar). If I open the link directly at example.org:5000/tweets then it works fine (footnote: not sure why the design choice was made to use a different port there, possibly related). Has anyone seen this kind of behavior and know why that might happen? It persists on safe mode and on all major browsers. No changes were made with the code from when it worked to when it stopped working in the last couple of days. The specific error that I receive is shown like the below.

{ Error: certificate has expired
    at TLSSocket.<anonymous> (_tls_wrap.js:1105:38)
    at emitNone (events.js:106:13)
    at TLSSocket.emit (events.js:208:7)
    at TLSSocket._finishInit (_tls_wrap.js:639:8)
    at TLSWrap.ssl.onhandshakedone (_tls_wrap.js:469:38)
  code: 'CERT_HAS_EXPIRED',
  config:
   { adapter: [Function: httpAdapter],
     transformRequest: { '0': [Function: transformRequest] },
     transformResponse: { '0': [Function: transformResponse] },
     timeout: 0,
     xsrfCookieName: 'XSRF-TOKEN',
     xsrfHeaderName: 'X-XSRF-TOKEN',
     maxContentLength: -1,
     validateStatus: [Function: validateStatus],
     headers:
      { Accept: 'application/json, text/plain, */*',
        'User-Agent': 'axios/0.16.2' },
     baseURL: 'https://example.org:5000/',
     method: 'get',
     url: 'https://example.org:5000/tweets',
     data: undefined },
  request:
   Writable {
     _writableState:
      WritableState {
        objectMode: false,
        highWaterMark: 16384,
        finalCalled: false,
        needDrain: false,
        ending: false,
        ended: false,
        finished: false,
        destroyed: false,
        decodeStrings: true,
        defaultEncoding: 'utf8',
        length: 0,
        writing: false,
        corked: 0,
        sync: true,
        bufferProcessing: false,
        onwrite: [Function: bound onwrite],
        writecb: null,
        writelen: 0,
        bufferedRequest: null,
        lastBufferedRequest: null,
        pendingcb: 0,
        prefinished: false,
        errorEmitted: false,
        bufferedRequestCount: 0,
        corkedRequestsFree: [Object] },
     writable: true,
     domain: null,
     _events:
      { response: [Function: handleResponse],
        error: [Function: handleRequestError] },
     _eventsCount: 2,
     _maxListeners: undefined,
     _options:
      { protocol: 'https:',
        maxRedirects: 21,
        maxBodyLength: 10485760,
        hostname: 'example.org',
        port: '5000',
        path: '/tweets',
        method: 'get',
        headers: [Object],
        agent: undefined,
        auth: undefined,
        nativeProtocols: [Object],
        pathname: '/tweets' },
     _redirectCount: 0,
     _redirects: [],
     _requestBodyLength: 0,
     _requestBodyBuffers: [],
     _onNativeResponse: [Function],
     _currentRequest:
      ClientRequest {
        domain: null,
        _events: [Object],
        _eventsCount: 6,
        _maxListeners: undefined,
        output: [],
        outputEncodings: [],
        outputCallbacks: [],
        outputSize: 0,
        writable: true,
        _last: true,
        upgrading: false,
        chunkedEncoding: false,
        shouldKeepAlive: false,
        useChunkedEncodingByDefault: false,
        sendDate: false,
        _removedConnection: false,
        _removedContLen: false,
        _removedTE: false,
        _contentLength: 0,
        _hasBody: true,
        _trailer: '',
        finished: true,
        _headerSent: true,
        socket: [Object],
        connection: [Object],
        _header: 'GET /tweets HTTP/1.1\r\nAccept: application/json, text/plain, */*\r\nUser-Agent: axios/0.16.2\r\nHost: example.org:5000\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n',
        _onPendingData: [Function: noopPendingOutput],
        agent: [Object],
        socketPath: undefined,
        timeout: undefined,
        method: 'GET',
        path: '/tweets',
        _ended: false,
        res: null,
        aborted: undefined,
        timeoutCb: null,
        upgradeOrConnect: false,
        parser: null,
        maxHeadersCount: null,
        _redirectable: [Circular],
        [Symbol(outHeadersKey)]: [Object] },
     _currentUrl: 'https://example.org:5000/tweets' },
  response: undefined,
  statusCode: 500,
  name: 'NuxtServerError' }

Answer 1

Upgrading to the latest version of Node resolved this issue for me. I was experiencing an identical issue to what you described on Node v8.10.0. I upgraded to Node v14.18.1 and restarted Nuxt, and now the site works normally.

sudo npm cache clean -f
sudo npm install -g n
sudo n stable