electron: Using worker_threads that keep running indefinitely fails assertion on SIGTERM

Issue Details

Electron Version:
- v9.0.0-beta.21 and 8.2.4
Operating System:
- macOS 10.15.4

Actual Behavior

An electron app that uses a worker thread that runs indefinitely in the main process (because of a server listening on a port etc.) throws the following error on exit:

/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron[93383]: ../../third_party/electron_node/src/node_worker.cc:358:virtual node::worker::Worker::~Worker(): Assertion `stopped_' failed.
 1: 0x10f4ce9b5 node::Buffer::New(v8::Isolate*, char*, unsigned long, void (*)(char*, void*), void*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 2: 0x10f4ce73f node::Buffer::New(v8::Isolate*, char*, unsigned long, void (*)(char*, void*), void*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 3: 0x10f54eb01 node::MultiIsolatePlatform::CancelPendingDelayedTasks(v8::Isolate*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 4: 0x10f54eb3e node::MultiIsolatePlatform::CancelPendingDelayedTasks(v8::Isolate*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 5: 0x10f47f56f node::EmitAsyncDestroy(node::Environment*, node::async_context) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 6: 0x10f44cc4e node::FreeEnvironment(node::Environment*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 7: 0x1095c4c81 ElectronInitializeICUandStartNode [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 8: 0x10b0fac71 v8::internal::SetupIsolateDelegate::SetupHeap(v8::internal::Heap*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
 9: 0x10b0fc514 v8::internal::SetupIsolateDelegate::SetupHeap(v8::internal::Heap*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
10: 0x10b0f8294 v8::internal::SetupIsolateDelegate::SetupHeap(v8::internal::Heap*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
11: 0x10afa1616 v8::internal::SetupIsolateDelegate::SetupHeap(v8::internal::Heap*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
12: 0x10afa126b v8::internal::SetupIsolateDelegate::SetupHeap(v8::internal::Heap*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
13: 0x10d522488 v8::internal::SetupIsolateDelegate::SetupHeap(v8::internal::Heap*) [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
14: 0x10a2222b4 ElectronInitializeICUandStartNode [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
15: 0x1094f8a54 ElectronMain [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework]
16: 0x108377110  [/Users/kishan/Downloads/electron-test/node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron]
17: 0x7fff6cb41cc9 start [/usr/lib/system/libdyld.dylib]

Expected Behavior

It shouldn’t throw the error.

To Reproduce

Couldn’t repro this in Electron Fiddle but the following should work:

Copy the following to worker-exit-issue.js

const { Worker, isMainThread } = require('worker_threads')

if (isMainThread) {
  new Worker(__filename)
  console.log('main thread')
} else {
  console.log('worker')
  const http = require('http')
  const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.end()
  })
  server.listen(12345)
}

Run electron worker-exit-issue.js
Quit the Electron app that runs from Dock or equivalent. (CTRL+C/SIGINT will not throw the error)
You’ll see the above error printed in the console:

This doesn’t happen if I run node worker-exit-issue.js

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 4
Comments: 28 (15 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

fix: try to prevent https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/23315, but seems not working at all — committed to tiddly-gittly/TidGi-Desktop by linonetwo 4 years ago
fix: use correct Node.js shutdown order The Environment is created after the Isolate and its platform data, so it also needs to be torn down before it. This fixes the crash mentioned below. (Thanks ... — committed to addaleax/electron by addaleax 3 years ago

Most upvoted comments

I’m this boat as well - while trying to refactor some blocking native logic out of the main thread for performance reasons, I’m now encountering an app crash every time I exit the app because I followed the advice in https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/performance and used Node.js workers.

From where I’m sitting, it looks to me like there is no way to have multithreaded native logic without encountering this error. Is that accurate?

dpaola2 on Aug 28, 2020

@KishanBagaria we are working around it by monkey-patching process.exit to exit all worker_threads before calling process.exit. This is a dirty hack because (among other reasons) it makes process.exit an asynchronous operation, but I’ve not been able to find a better workaround 😕

You will have to audit all usages of process.exit in your codebase and ensure that they all handle an asynchronous process.exit correctly. Additionally, your process can no longer exit normally when there are no queued events, you’ll always have to make sure you call the worker exit routine before exiting.

Initially, we were calling .terminate() on each worker_thread on process.exit and waiting for that to finish, but some users were still running into problems with SIGABRT. So we switched to using postMessage to tell each thread to kill itself, waiting for that, and then exiting the parent process. This seems to work fine in practice: https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/pull/7572/files

Still, this is a bad workaround due to the reasons mentioned above. I hope someone from the Electron team can take an in-depth look at this issue.

flotwig on Jul 27, 2020

This issue seems like it’s present in Node.js v12 but not v14 - i can’t repro it after https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/25249 but can in versions prior

codebytere on Oct 13, 2020

Sounds like this is fixed, so I’ll close the issue. Let me know if I’m mistaken and I can reopen.

nornagon on Apr 9, 2021

Correction, the proper fix actually needs to be done in electron: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/28468 Thanks @addaleax for helping me with this!

indutny on Mar 31, 2021

@m4heshd of course it can be fixed. Just need to fix node v12 first 😂 (See: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/38010)

indutny on Mar 31, 2021

Having the same issue. Blocked from everywhere. Can’t use web workers because of the need to use native modules and it can’t seem to load any kind of external module. Can’t use worker threads because of this issue. So frustrated not being able to move forward. @flotwig Even if you end all the threads gracefully, Electron will exit with code -1073741819 (0xC0000005) whenever the process has been ended. An access violation on Windows.

m4heshd on Feb 20, 2021

I’m fairly certain it’s this commit: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/30467/commits/b6738bc62479391e5d93026716ed92d6879ea60e

that would need to be backported to 9-x-y through 11-x-y

codebytere on Nov 10, 2020

@KishanBagaria I believe I’m having the same issue: #23366

flotwig on May 29, 2020