diff --git a/History.md b/History.md
index 1c3d316992..949e3ceec2 100644
--- a/History.md
+++ b/History.md
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@
 
 * Insert a `Date` header into emails by default: https://github.com/meteor/meteor/pull/6916/files
 * `meteor test` now supports setting the bind address using `--port IP:PORT` the same as `meteor run` [PR #6964](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/pull/6964) [Issue #6961](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/issues/6961)
+* `Meteor.apply` now takes a `noRetry` option to opt-out of automatically retrying non-idempotent methods on connection blips: [PR #6180](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/pull/6180)
 
 * DDP callbacks are now batched on the client side. This means that after a DDP message arrives, the local DDP client will batch changes for a minimum of 5ms (configurable via `bufferedWritesInterval`) and a maximum of 500ms (configurable via `bufferedWritesMaxAge`) before calling any callbacks (such as cursor observe callbacks).
 
diff --git a/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js b/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js
index f926d3f042..53cdbc6252 100644
--- a/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js
+++ b/tools/isobuild/meteor-npm.js
@@ -782,7 +782,7 @@ var installFromShrinkwrap = function (dir) {
 // dependencies. `npm install` times out after more than a minute.
 var ensureConnected = function () {
   try {
-    httpHelpers.getUrl("http://registry.npmjs.org");
+    httpHelpers.getUrl(process.env.NPM_CONFIG_REGISTRY || "http://registry.npmjs.org");
   } catch (e) {
     buildmessage.error("Can't install npm dependencies. " +
                        "Are you connected to the internet?");