Node.js catch ENOMEM error thrown after spawn

Question

Node.js catch ENOMEM error thrown after spawn

My Node.js script crashes because of a thrown ENOMEM (Out of memory) errnoException when using spawn.

The error:

child_process.js:935
  throw errnoException(process._errno, 'spawn');
        ^

Error: spawn ENOMEM
  at errnoException (child_process.js:988:11)
  at ChildProcess.spawn (child_process.js:935:11)
  at Object.exports.spawn (child_process.js:723:9)
  at module.exports ([...]/node_modules/zbarimg/index.js:19:23)

I'm already using listeners for the error and exit event, but non of them getting fired in case of this error.

My code:

zbarimg = process.spawn('zbarimg', [photo, '-q']);
zbarimg.on('error', function(err) { ... });
zbarimg.on('close', function(code) { ... });

Full source code available.

Is there anything I can do to prevent the script from crashing? How do I catch the thrown ENOMEM error?

Thanks!

javascript
node.js
error-handling
try-catch
spawn

Answer 1

You can try changing the amount of memory node uses with this command: node ----max-old-space-size=1024 yourscript.js

--max-old-space-size=1024 will allocate 1 gig of memory.

By default node will use 512 mb of ram but depending on your platform you may need to allocate more or less so the garbage collection kicks in when you need it.

If your platform has less than 500 mb of ram available then try setting the memory usage lower to --max-old-space-size=256.