Releasing big node module from memory - node.js

I'm loading a big js module into memory and I want to release it when is no longer needed to free RAM.
The code I am using to test is like this:
var lex = require('./lex.js'); //Big module (10M array)
setInterval(() => console.log(process.memoryUsage()), 1000);
setTimeout(() => {
lex = null;
delete require.cache[require.resolve('./lex.js')];
}, 5000);
// this script outputs each second
// { rss: 151756800, heapTotal: 131487520, heapUsed: 108843840 }
// { rss: 151760896, heapTotal: 131487520, heapUsed: 108850024 }
// ...
// and after 5 seconds there is no change
After 5 seconds the process is still using the same memory as after the initial module load.
What am I doing wrong? Thank you!

Delete Require cache will help you to load once again the content not from the cache ,as of me it will not delete or free up your memory

Related

If NodeJS caches required modules, why is my memory increasing the more I require a single module?

I'm investigating a memory issue in a NodeJS application. In the application, we need to do some dynamic requires:
function executeSomeCode(module) {
const m = require(module).run;
run();
}
In the application, it can happen that the same module is passed to the executeSomeCode function multiple times. So it will be required multiple times.
My question is if this is expected to have an effect on memory usage and/or performance.
I created a little test:
function executeFoo() {
const foo = require('./foo').foo;
foo();
}
function main(){
executeFoo();
const first = process.memoryUsage();
for (var i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
executeFoo();
}
console.log(first);
console.log(process.memoryUsage());
}
main();
Where foo is just a simple module with a simple function logging a line. These are the numbers of a run:
{
rss: 26824704,
heapTotal: 5005312,
heapUsed: 3157040,
external: 1083723,
arrayBuffers: 9898
}
{
rss: 39321600,
heapTotal: 8466432,
heapUsed: 4497528,
external: 1083763,
arrayBuffers: 9898
}
As you can see the rss increases, but I'm not expert enough in NodeJS to be sure that this is a problem or if NodeJS will handle this. I read that NodeJS will cache the required modules, but then why is my memory increasing?

external and heapUsed decreases but heapTotal increases

It is quite surprising to see the counters heapUsed and external showing reduction but still the heapTotal showing a spike.
***Memory Log - Before soak summarization 2
"rss":217214976,"heapTotal":189153280,"heapUsed":163918648,"external":1092977
Spike in rss: 4096
Spike in heapTotal: 0
Spike in heapUsed: 22240
Spike in external: 0
***Memory Log - Before summarizing log summary for type SOAK
"rss":220295168,"heapTotal":192294912,"heapUsed":157634440,"external":318075
Spike in rss: 3080192
Spike in heapTotal: 3141632
Spike in heapUsed: -6284208
Spike in external: -774902
Any ideas why the heapTotal is drastically increasing despite the heapUsed and external going drastically down. I mean I really thought that heapTotal = heapUsed + external.
I am using the following code to track memory
var prevStats;
function logMemory (path,comment) {
if (! fs.existsSync(path)) {
fs.mkdirSync(path, DIR_MODE);
}
path = pathUtils.posix.join(path,"memoryLeak.txt");
if (comment) comment = comment.replace(/(.+)/,' - $1');
var memStats = process.memoryUsage();
fs.appendFileSync(path,`\r\n\r\n***Memory Log ${comment}\r\n`+JSON.stringify(process.memoryUsage()));
if (prevStats) {
_.forEach (
Object.keys(memStats),
key => {
if (memStats.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
fs.appendFileSync(path,`\r\nSpike in ${key}: ${memStats[key]-prevStats[key]}`);
}
}
);
}
prevStats = memStats;
}

node process memory usage, resident set size constantly increasing

Quted from What do the return values of node.js process.memoryUsage() stand for? RSS is the resident set size, the portion of the process's memory held in RAM
(how much memory is held in the RAM by this process in Bytes) file size of 'text.txt' used in example is here is 370KB (378880 Bytes)
var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
console.log("On app bootstrap = ", process.memoryUsage());
app.get('/test', function(req, res) {
fs.readFile(__dirname + '/text.txt', function(err, file) {
console.log("When File is available = ", process.memoryUsage());
res.end(file);
});
setTimeout(function() {
console.log("After sending = ", process.memoryUsage());
}, 5000);
});
app.listen(8081);
So on app bootstrap: { rss: 22069248, heapTotal: 15551232, heapUsed: 9169152 }
After i made 10 request for '/test' situation is:
When File is available = { rss: 33087488, heapTotal: 18635008, heapUsed: 6553552 }
After sending = { rss: 33447936, heapTotal: 18635008, heapUsed: 6566856 }
So from app boostrap to 10nth request rss is increased for 11378688 bytes which is roughly 30 times larger than size of text.txt file.
I know that this code will buffers up the entire data.txt file into memory for every request before writing the result back to clients, but i expected that after the requst is finished occupied memory for 'text.txt' will be released? But that is not the case?
Second how to set up maximum size of RAM memory which node process can consume?
In js garbage collector does not run immediately after execution of your code. Thus the memory is not freed immediately after execution. You can run GC independently, after working with large objects, if you care about memory consumption. More information you can find here.
setTimeout(function() {
global.gc();
console.log("After sending = ", process.memoryUsage());
}, 5000);
To look at your memory allocation you can run your server with v8-profiler and get a Heap snapshot. More info here.
Try running your example again and give the process some time to run garbage collection. Keep an eye on your process' memory usage with a system monitor and it should clear after some time. If it doesn't go down the process can't go higher in memory usage than mentioned below.
According to the node documentation the memory limit is 512 mb for 32 bit and 1 gb for 64 bit. They can be increased if necessary.

Why does an empty node.js script consume more and more RAM?

Running this:
setInterval(function() {
console.log(process.memoryUsage());
}, 1000);
shows memory usage constantly growing:
{ rss: 9076736, heapTotal: 6131200, heapUsed: 2052352 }
... some time later
{ rss: 10960896, heapTotal: 6131200, heapUsed: 2939096 }
... some time later
{ rss: 11177984, heapTotal: 6131200, heapUsed: 3141576 }
Why does this happen?
The program isn't empty, it's running a timer, checking memory usage, and writing to the console once a second. That causes objects to be created in the heap and until garbage collection runs your heap usage will keep increasing.
If you let it go you should eventually see heapUsed go back down each time garbage collection is triggered.

jsdom and node.js leaking memory

I found a few reference to people having a similar issue where the answer always was, make sure you call window.close() when done. However that does not seem to be working for me (node 0.8.14 and jsdom 0.3.1)
A simple repro
var util = require('util');
var jsdom=require('jsdom');
function doOne() {
var htmlDoc = '<html><head></head><body id="' + i + '"></body></html>';
jsdom.env(htmlDoc, null, null, function(errors, window) {
window.close();
});
}
for (var i=1;i< 100000;i++ ) {
doOne();
if(i % 500 == 0) {
console.log(i + ":" + util.inspect(process.memoryUsage()));
}
}
console.log ("done");
Output I get is
500:{ rss: 108847104, heapTotal: 115979520, heapUsed: 102696768 }
1000:{ rss: 198250496, heapTotal: 194394624, heapUsed: 190892120 }
1500:{ rss: 267304960, heapTotal: 254246912, heapUsed: 223847712 }
...
11000:{ rss: 1565204480, heapTotal: 1593723904, heapUsed: 1466889432 }
At this point the fan goes wild and the test actually stops...or at leasts starts going very slowly
Does anyone have any other tips than window.close to get rid of the memory leak (or it sure looks like a memory leak)
Thanks!
Peter
Using jsdom 0.6.0 to help scrape some data and ran into the same problem.
window.close only helped slow the memory leak, but it did eventually creep up till the process got killed.
Running the script with
node --expose-gc myscript.js
Until they fix the memory leak, manually calling the garbage collector in addition to calling window.close seems to work:
if (process.memoryUsage().heapUsed > 200000000) { // memory use is above 200MB
global.gc();
}
Stuck that after the call to window.close. Memory use immediately drops back to baseline (around 50MB for me) every time it gets triggered. Barely perceptible halt.
update: also consider calling global.gc() multiple times in succession rather than only once (i.e. global.gc();global.gc();global.gc();global.gc();global.gc();)
Calling window.gc() multiple times was more effective (based on my imperfect tests), I suspect because it possibly caused chrome to trigger a major GC event rather than a minor one. - https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/350#issuecomment-688969443
You are not giving the program any idle time to do garbage collection. I believe you will run into the same problem with any large object graph created many times tightly in a loop with no breaks.
This is substantiated by CheapSteaks's answer, which manually forces the garbage collection. There can't be a memory leak in jsdom if that works, since memory leaks by definition prevent the garbage collector from collecting the leaked memory.
I had the same problem with jsdom and switcht to cheerio, which is much faster than jsdom and works even after scanning hundreds of sites. Perhaps you should try it, too. Only problem is, that it dosent have all the selectors which you can use in jsdom.
hope it works for you, too.
Daniel
with gulp, memory usage, cleanup, variable delete, window.close()
var gb = setInterval(function () {
//only call if memory use is bove 200MB
if (process.memoryUsage().heapUsed > 200000000) {
global.gc();
}
}, 10000); // 10sec
gulp.task('tester', ['clean:raw2'], function() {
return gulp.src('./raw/*.html')
.pipe(logger())
.pipe(map(function(contents, filename) {
var doc = jsdom.jsdom(contents);
var window = doc.parentWindow;
var $ = jquery(window);
console.log( $('title').text() );
var html = window.document.documentElement.outerHTML;
$( doc ).ready(function() {
console.log( "document loaded" );
window.close();
});
return html;
}))
.pipe(gulp.dest('./raw2'))
.on('end', onEnd);
});
and I had constatly between 200mb - 300mb usage, for 7k files. it took 30 minutes.
It might be helpful for someone, as i googled and didnt find anything helpful.
A work around for this is to run the jsdom related code in a forked child_process and send back the relevant results when done. then kill the child_process.

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