What is a good method to determine a memory leak in node.js?

Question

When deployed my node.js application hits memory related errors (i.e. FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_0 Allocation failed - process out of memory). I would like to profile my node locally to see what is eating up memory but am not sure where to start.

This question is answered here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4918557/debugging-memory-leaks-with-node-js-server — Ryan Olds, Jan 08 '12 at 17:42
The answer there (use profiler from node inspector) has us use something labeled "VERY EXPERIMENTAL" and not recommended by the author himself. — Aaron Silverman, Jan 10 '12 at 20:35

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 09 '12 at 22:18

2

You can use node-inspector and the v8-profiler to do this. Install it from npm:

$ npm install v8-profiler

And then use it to take heap snapshots (taken from instructions):

var profiler = require('v8-profiler');
var snapshot = profiler.takeSnapshot([name])      //takes a heap snapshot

answered Jan 09 '12 at 22:18

Ankit

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v8-profiler is currently broken for me: https://github.com/dannycoates/v8-profiler/issues/9 – Aaron Silverman Jan 10 '12 at 20:34
But when it works again this will probably be the best way, thanks! – Aaron Silverman Jan 17 '12 at 15:42

What is a good method to determine a memory leak in node.js?

1 Answers1