Fatal error invalid table size allocation failed javascript heap out of memory

Today I ran my script for filesystem indexing to refresh RAID files index and after 4h it crashed with following error:

[md5:]  241613/241627 97.5%  
[md5:]  241614/241627 97.5%  
[md5:]  241625/241627 98.1%
Creating missing list... (79570 files missing)
Creating new files list... (241627 new files)

<--- Last few GCs --->

11629672 ms: Mark-sweep 1174.6 (1426.5) -> 1172.4 (1418.3) MB, 659.9 / 0 ms [allocation failure] [GC in old space requested].
11630371 ms: Mark-sweep 1172.4 (1418.3) -> 1172.4 (1411.3) MB, 698.9 / 0 ms [allocation failure] [GC in old space requested].
11631105 ms: Mark-sweep 1172.4 (1411.3) -> 1172.4 (1389.3) MB, 733.5 / 0 ms [last resort gc].
11631778 ms: Mark-sweep 1172.4 (1389.3) -> 1172.4 (1368.3) MB, 673.6 / 0 ms [last resort gc].


<--- JS stacktrace --->

==== JS stack trace =========================================

Security context: 0x3d1d329c9e59 <JS Object>
1: SparseJoinWithSeparatorJS(aka SparseJoinWithSeparatorJS) [native array.js:~84] [pc=0x3629ef689ad0] (this=0x3d1d32904189 <undefined>,w=0x2b690ce91071 <JS Array[241627]>,L=241627,M=0x3d1d329b4a11 <JS Function ConvertToString (SharedFunctionInfo 0x3d1d3294ef79)>,N=0x7c953bf4d49 <String[4]: ,n  >)
2: Join(aka Join) [native array.js:143] [pc=0x3629ef616696] (this=0x3d1d32904189 <undefin...

FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory
 1: node::Abort() [/usr/bin/node]
 2: 0xe2c5fc [/usr/bin/node]
 3: v8::Utils::ReportApiFailure(char const*, char const*) [/usr/bin/node]
 4: v8::internal::V8::FatalProcessOutOfMemory(char const*, bool) [/usr/bin/node]
 5: v8::internal::Factory::NewRawTwoByteString(int, v8::internal::PretenureFlag) [/usr/bin/node]
 6: v8::internal::Runtime_SparseJoinWithSeparator(int, v8::internal::Object**, v8::internal::Isolate*) [/usr/bin/node]
 7: 0x3629ef50961b

Server is equipped with 16gb RAM and 24gb SSD swap. I highly doubt my script exceeded 36gb of memory. At least it shouldn’t

Script creates index of files stored as Array of Objects with files metadata (modification dates, permissions, etc, no big data)

Here’s full script code:
http://pastebin.com/mjaD76c3

I’ve already experiend weird node issues in the past with this script what forced me eg. split index into multiple files as node was glitching when working on such big files as String. Is there any way to improve nodejs memory management with huge datasets?

asked Jul 25, 2016 at 2:45

I’ve faced this same problem recently and came across to this thread but my problem was with React App. Below changes in the node start command solved my issues.

Syntax

node --max-old-space-size=<size> path-to/fileName.js

Example

node --max-old-space-size=16000 scripts/build.js

Why size is 16000 in max-old-space-size?

Basically, it varies depends on the allocated memory to that thread and your node settings.

How to verify and give right size?

This is basically stay in our engine v8. below code helps you to understand the Heap Size of your local node v8 engine.

const v8 = require('v8');
const totalHeapSize = v8.getHeapStatistics().total_available_size;
const totalHeapSizeGb = (totalHeapSize / 1024 / 1024 / 1024).toFixed(2);
console.log('totalHeapSizeGb: ', totalHeapSizeGb);

answered Aug 13, 2019 at 15:24

Recently, in one of my project ran into same problem. Tried couple of things which anyone can try as a debugging to identify the root cause:

1. As everyone suggested , increase the memory limit in node by adding this command:

   {
      "scripts":{
         "server":"node --max-old-space-size={size-value} server/index.js"
      }
   }
   

Here size-value i have defined for my application was 1536 (as my kubernetes pod memory was 2 GB limit , request 1.5 GB)

So always define the size-value based on your frontend infrastructure/architecture limit (little lesser than limit)

One strict callout here in the above command, use --max-old-space-size after node command not after the filename server/index.js.

1. If you have ngnix config file then check following things:

   • worker_connections: 16384 (for heavy frontend applications)
     [nginx default is 512 connections per worker, which is too low for modern applications]

   • use: epoll (efficient method) [nginx supports a variety of connection processing methods]

   • http: add following things to free your worker from getting busy in handling some unwanted task. (client_body_timeout , reset_timeout_connection , client_header_timeout,keepalive_timeout ,send_timeout).

2. Remove all logging/tracking tools like APM , Kafka , UTM tracking, Prerender (SEO) etc middlewares or turn off.

3. Now code level debugging: In your main server file , remove unwanted console.log which is just printing a message.

4. Now check for every server route i.e app.get() , app.post() ... below scenarios:

• data => if(data) res.send(data) // do you really need to wait for data or that api returns something in response which i have to wait for?? , If not then modify like this:

data => res.send(data) // this will not block your thread, apply everywhere where it's needed

• else part: if there is no error coming then simply return res.send({}) , NO console.log here.

• error part: some people define as error or err which creates confusion and mistakes. like this:

  `error => { next(err) } // here err is undefined`
  
   `err => {next(error) } // here error is undefined`
  
   `app.get(API , (re,res) =>{
       error => next(error) // here next is not defined
    })`
  

• remove winston , elastic-epm-node other unused libraries using npx depcheck command.

• In the axios service file , check the methods and logging properly or not like :

    if(successCB) console.log("success") successCB(response.data) // here it's wrong statement, because on success you are just logging and then `successCB` sending  outside the if block which return in failure case also.
  

• Save yourself from using stringify , parse etc on accessive large dataset. (which i can see in your above shown logs too.

1. Last but not least , for every time when your application crashes or pods restarted check the logs. In log specifically look for this section: Security context
   This will give you why , where and who is the culprit behind the crash.

answered Apr 2, 2021 at 5:02

For other beginners like me, who didn’t find any suitable solution for this error, check the node version installed (x32, x64, x86). I have a 64-bit CPU and I’ve installed x86 node version, which caused the CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory error.

You can also change Window’s environment variables with:

 $env:NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=8192"

answered Oct 17, 2020 at 17:47

Unix (Mac OS)

1. Open a terminal and open our .zshrc file using nano like so (this will create one, if one doesn’t exist):

   nano ~/.zshrc

2. Update our NODE_OPTIONS environment variable by adding the following line into our currently open .zshrc file:

   export NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=8192 # increase node memory limit

Please note that we can set the number of megabytes passed in to whatever we like, provided our system has enough memory (here we are passing in 8192 megabytes which is roughly 8 GB).

1. Save and exit nano by pressing: ctrl + x, then y to agree and finally enter to save the changes.

2. Close and reopen the terminal to make sure our changes have been recognised.

3. We can print out the contents of our .zshrc file to see if our changes were saved like so: cat ~/.zshrc.

Linux (Ubuntu)

1. Open a terminal and open the .bashrc file using nano like so:

   nano ~/.bashrc

The remaining steps are similar with the Mac steps from above, except we would most likely be using ~/.bashrc by default (as opposed to ~/.zshrc). So these values would need to be substituted!

Link to Nodejs Docs

answered Feb 14, 2022 at 5:30

Use the option --optimize-for-size. It’s going to focus on using less ram.

answered Dec 9, 2021 at 9:31

In my case, I upgraded node.js version to latest (version 12.8.0) and it worked like a charm.

answered Jan 12, 2018 at 7:01

For Angular, this is how I fixed

In Package.json, inside script tag add this

"scripts": {
  "build-prod": "node --max_old_space_size=5048 ./node_modules/@angular/cli/bin/ng build --prod",
},

Now in terminal/cmd instead of using ng build --prod just use

npm run build-prod

If you want to use this configuration for build only just remove --prod from all the 3 places

answered Mar 12, 2021 at 17:07

I experienced the same problem today. The problem for me was, I was trying to import lot of data to the database in my NextJS project.

So what I did is, I installed win-node-env package like this:

yarn add win-node-env

Because my development machine was Windows. I installed it locally than globally. You can install it globally also like this: yarn global add win-node-env

And then in the package.json file of my NextJS project, I added another startup script like this:

"dev_more_mem": "NODE_OPTIONS="--max_old_space_size=8192" next dev"

Here, am passing the node option, ie. setting 8GB as the limit.
So my package.json file somewhat looks like this:

{
  "name": "my_project_name_here",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "next dev",
    "dev_more_mem": "NODE_OPTIONS="--max_old_space_size=8192" next dev",
    "build": "next build",
    "lint": "next lint"
  },
  ......
}

And then I run it like this:

yarn dev_more_mem

For me, I was facing the issue only on my development machine (because I was doing the importing of large data). Hence this solution. Thought to share this as it might come in handy for others.

answered Mar 8, 2022 at 21:44

answered Aug 30, 2022 at 10:03

answered Apr 4, 2018 at 8:39

If you are trying to launch not node itself, but some other soft, for example webpack you can use the environment variable and cross-env package:

$ cross-env NODE_OPTIONS='--max-old-space-size=4096' 
  webpack --progress --config build/webpack.config.dev.js

answered Apr 30, 2019 at 1:50

For angular project bundling, I’ve added the below line to my pakage.json file in the scripts section.

"build-prod": "node --max_old_space_size=5120 ./node_modules/@angular/cli/bin/ng build --prod --base-href /"

Now, to bundle my code, I use npm run build-prod instead of ng build --requiredFlagsHere

hope this helps!

answered Oct 4, 2019 at 16:00

answered Jun 4, 2021 at 14:01

None of all these every single answers worked for me (I didn’t try to update npm tho).

Here’s what worked: My program was using two arrays. One that was parsed on JSON, the other that was generated from datas on the first one. Just before the second loop, I just had to set my first JSON parsed array back to [].

That way a loooooot of memory is freed, allowing the program to continue execution without failing memory allocation at some point.

Cheers !

answered Dec 20, 2022 at 20:03

You can fix a «heap out of memory» error in Node.js by below approaches.

1. Increase the amount of memory allocated to the Node.js process by using the —max-old-space-size flag when starting the application. For example, you can increase the limit to 4GB by running node —max-old-space-size=4096 index.js.

2. Use a memory leak detection tool, such as the Node.js heap dump module, to identify and fix memory leaks in your application. You can also use the node inspector and use chrome://inspect to check memory usage.

3. Optimize your code to reduce the amount of memory needed. This might involve reducing the size of data structures, reusing objects instead of creating new ones, or using more efficient algorithms.

4. Use a garbage collector (GC) algorithm to manage memory automatically. Node.js uses the V8 engine’s garbage collector by default, but you can also use other GC algorithms such as the Garbage Collection in Node.js

5. Use a containerization technology like Docker which limits the amount of memory available to the container.

6. Use a process manager like pm2 which allows to automatically restart the node application if it goes out of memory.

answered Jan 12 at 16:00