Detecting Memory Leaks in Node.js

Dara Hayes

dara.hayes@redhat.com

@darahayess

@darahayes

That's me!

Let's talk about V8

Resident Set

Code

Stack

Pointers, Primitive types

Heap

Objects, Strings, Closures

Used Heap

V8 Memory Scheme

process.memoryUsage()

{ 
  rss: 21561344,
  heapTotal: 10522624,
  heapUsed: 4110504
}

Garbage Collection

Heap

Young Space (1-8MB)

Young Space and Old Space in V8 Heap

Old Space

New allocations

Scavenge Garbage Collection

More Frequent, Much Faster GCs

Objects that Survived 2 GCs in Young Space

 Mark-Sweep Collection

Less Frequent, Pauses All JS Execution

Scavenge GC

Mark-Sweep GC

node --trace-gc index.js

Let's find a memory leak

aka demo time :)

const http = require('http')

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
 for (var i=0; i<1000; i++) {
   server.on('request', function leakyfunc() {})
 }

 res.end('Hello World\n')
}).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1')

server.setMaxListeners(0)

1. Create heap dumps at different time intervals

2. Compare the dumps to see growth areas

It's so Simple!

Tools We Can Use

npm.im/memwatch-next

npm.im/heapdump

--inspect or (npm.im/node-inspector)

--trace-gc

--expose-gc

and more...

const memwatch = require('memwatch-next')

memwatch.on('leak', function (info) {
  console.log('Memory leak detected:\n', info)
})

‘A leak event will be emitted when your heap usage has increased for five consecutive garbage collections.’

A fork of the outdated memwatch module.

Last published 2 years ago but it works on Node 8.

--inspect

Debug your node process in Chrome dev tools

Create heap dumps

Only available in Node v6+

Otherwise use npm.im/node-inspector

const heapdump = require('heapdump')

heapdump.writeSnapshot((err, filename) => {
  if (err) console.error(err)
  else console.log('Wrote snapshot: ' + filename)
})

Snapshots can be opened in dev tools.

Can be triggered by sending SIGUSR2 signal.

demo
Are there low level tools out there?

Take Core Dumps of Your Node Process

--abort-on-uncaught-exception 
# Create a core dump when process crashes
gcore <pid> 
# Low level tool to create dumps

Inspect Core Dumps with Low Level Debugging Tools

Things to Consider

  • Snapshots are expensive on CPU and Memory.

  • Try to find leaks in a test environment

  • If using something like memwatch in prod, make sure leaks are picked up by alerting tools

  • Consider other ways of tracking memory e.g. process.memoryUsage()

  • Beware of false positives

end ☕️

Notes

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