Oh no, your JavaScript code isn't just throwing an exception or crashing: it's segfaulting. What does that mean, and how can you fix it? You'll know t

How to Debug Node.js Segmentation Faults

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2023-03-15 02:30:09

Oh no, your JavaScript code isn't just throwing an exception or crashing: it's segfaulting. What does that mean, and how can you fix it?

You'll know this happens because node will hard crash, exiting silently without any kind of real stack trace, perhaps printing just segmentation fault (core dumped).

(If you do get a normal JavaScript stack trace on the other hand, then you're dealing with a normal JS error, not a segfault. Lucky you! You might be more interested in the guide on How to Debug Anything)

A segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location that it is not allowed to access, or attempts to access a memory location in a way that is not allowed (for example, attempting to write to a read-only location, or to overwrite part of the operating system). - wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmentation_fault

In practice, a segfault occurs when your program breaks some fundamental rule set by the operating system. In that case, the operating system sends your process a signal (SIGSEGV on Mac & Linux, STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION on Windows), and typically the process shuts down immediately.