Signing in to Microsoft Fabric via ms-fabric-cli – Timeout Error

[JiriSM]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently facing an issue when trying to authenticate to Microsoft Fabric using the ms-fabric-cli tool. I've tried both interactive login using browser and service principal authentication, but in both cases I receive the following error:

I'm running the CLI from a PowerShell terminal inside Visual Studio Code.

Connection to login.microsoftonline.com timed out. (connect timeout=None)

I believe, that I do have the necessary permissions and access, as I'm able to:

• Successfully call Fabric / Power BI APIs using PowerShell cmdlets
• Access Fabric through the Fabric Studio extension in Visual Studio Code

Additionally, when attempting interactive login, the browser window doesn't even open — the process seems to hang before reaching that step.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue or have any suggestions on how to resolve this timeout error? Could it be related to network configuration, proxy settings, or something else specific to the CLI or Python setting? 

Thanks in advance for any help or insights!

[Nasif_Azam]

Hey @JiriSM ,

To troubleshoot this issue, here are few suggestions and steps you might try:

1. Check Proxy Settings:
   The error you're receiving may be due to your network configuration, particularly if you're behind a proxy. Check whether your machine is behind a proxy and if so, ensure that it's properly configured to allow traffic to login.microsoftonline.com. You can configure the CLI to use a proxy by setting the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables. You can check your proxy settings in PowerShell using:

   Get-Item -Path env:HTTP_PROXY
   Get-Item -Path env:HTTPS_PROXY

   If they're set, try temporarily unsetting them or ensuring they point to the correct proxy server.

2. Network Configuration:
   If your network restricts outbound internet access (e.g., firewall), ensure that access to login.microsoftonline.com is allowed. Check if any firewall rules might be blocking the connection to that endpoint.

3. Interactive Login:
   If the interactive login doesn't open the browser window, ensure that your default browser is set up properly and that there are no browser-related issues preventing it from launching. You could try setting a different browser as the default or manually open the login URL in a browser if the process hangs.

4. Check for Python Configuration Issues:
   The ms-fabric-cli tool depends on Python, so ensure that Python is correctly configured. Verify your Python version in powershell with:

   python --version

   Also, check if any environment variables related to Python (like PYTHONPATH) are set improperly.

5. CLI Version:
   Ensure you're using the latest version of the ms-fabric-cli tool. There might have been bug fixes or improvements that could resolve your issue. You can check for updates using powershell:

   pip install --upgrade ms-fabric-cli

6. Verbose Logging:
   Run the ms-fabric-cli command with verbose logging enabled to gather more details about the error. This could give you additional insights into where the process is failing. You can typically enable verbose logging with a --debug or similar flag (depending on the tool).

7. Check Azure CLI Authentication:
   If you're able to access APIs with PowerShell cmdlets, make sure you're also authenticated with Azure CLI (az login) before running the ms-fabric-cli tool. Sometimes the CLI tools might rely on Azure CLI authentication for some operations.

8. Verify Fabric CLI Permissions:
   Even though you mentioned that you have the necessary permissions, ensure that your service principal or user account has sufficient permissions to authenticate and access the resources you're trying to reach.

For Detailed Informatin:

Check Proxy Settings

Azure CLI Documentation

ms-fabric-cli Installation and Troubleshooting

Python Installation and Configuration

Azure Active Directory Authentication

If you found this solution helpful, please consider accepting it and giving it a kudos (Like) it’s greatly appreciated and helps others find the solution more easily.

Best Regards,
Nasif Azam