Business objects retained by Global Handles in heap dump

[Russ Frank]

Hey,

I have a heap dump (obtained with bnoordhuis/node-heapdump) of a production node process that had a large heap. I found a bunch of business objects retained by "(Global Handles)". I'm wondering how a JS object can end up being retained in this way. Would it need to go through a native extension which is accidentally creating such a global handle and thereby retaining the object?

Thanks.

[Zlatko]

On Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 7:56:11 AM UTC+2, Russ Frank wrote:

I have a heap dump (obtained with bnoordhuis/node-heapdump) of a production node process that had a large heap. I found a bunch of business objects retained by "(Global Handles)". I'm wondering how a JS object can end up being retained in this way. Would it need to go through a native extension which is accidentally creating such a global handle and thereby retaining the object?

I don't think it needs a native extension there - a simple variable leak can do that. Some code analysis tools can help you check your javascript parts for such issues, not sure about the extension. Is that something occurring regularly? 

[Ben Noordhuis]

A native extension is the most plausible culprit, yes.