How to set pass max-old-space-size memory limit to Nodejs running with memory-usage package

Question

I am using https://www.npmjs.com/package/memory-usage to see how my Node application uses the memory, by running 'memory-usage app.js' in MACOS terminal. However, after some testing, it always crash at 1.4GB.

In normal nodejs command, to set the memory limit higher, I could just use 'node --max-old-space-size=8192 app.js'. However running 'memory-usage --max-old-space-size=8192 app.js' won't work.

My Mac has following RAM details:

BANK 0/DIMM0:

Size: 4 GB Type: DDR3 Speed: 1867 MHz

BANK 1/DIMM0:

Size: 4 GB Type: DDR3 Speed: 1867 MHz

What is the maximum size I can go for my Nodejs application and how to set that with memory-usage?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Try setting it via NODE_OPTIONS :

Unix:

export NODE_OPTIONS="--max_old_space_size=8192" && memory-usage app.js

Windows:

set NODE_OPTIONS="--max_old_space_size=8192" && memory-usage app.js

Answer 2

Its likely that the memory-usage executable is just ignoring your max-old-space argument. You should be able to find a way around that in their docs. It looks like Node has default memory allocation of 1G on 64bit systems.

See related (possibly duplicate) thread. Limiting node.js's memory usage

1.4G sounds a bit high to me. I wonder if you're leaking memory somewhere?

See also: How to monitor the memory usage of Node.js?