I just did an apt-get update and apt-get upgrade. I then flushed the PM2 logs and restarted. When it crashes again, I’ll post the log info as you asked.

@sdetweil Possibly because you’re running on a 4 and I’m on a 3?

@sdetweil said in Third-Party Module - how to get help?:

and other than image, you are running default modules, correct?

I have installed your MMM-ImagesPhotos and MMM-BackgroundSlideshow. Even paring the configuration down to ONLY one third-party module running, it will die unless I have the http cache disabled.

I have changed the swap size from the default of 100 to 250 and when it crashed, there was only a small portion of swap being used.

@sdetweil

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ node -v
v10.17.0

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ npm -v
6.11.3

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Raspbian
Description:    Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release:        10
Codename:       buster

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 4.19.75-v7+ #1270 SMP Tue Sep 24 18:45:11 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

@sdetweil said in Third-Party Module - how to get help?:

git checkout modules/node_modules/node_helper/index.js

yeah, I get into the habit of installing add-ons this way and I did the npm install.

Your fix cleaned it right up and it started up. But, guess what? Out of memory again.

Seems that I have bigger issues here…

@sdetweil

Seems your code has dependencies? I’m getting an error when trying to load:

WARNING! Could not load config file. Starting with default configuration. Error found: Error: Cannot find module 'node_helper'

@sdetweil

I will give your code a try. Increasing the swap size and re-enabling the cache resulted in another almost immediate crash.

:(

@sdetweil said in Third-Party Module - how to get help?:

https://wpitchoune.net/tricks/raspberry_pi3_increase_swap_size.html

I will give this a shot. Given that each time the slideshow has died, it has indicated that it ran out of memory at roughly 100Mb (and the default swap is 100Mb), this could definitely be related. I’ll try doubling it to see what happens with this module.

I was going to try tackling the transitioning to prevent changing to the new image until it was rendered (to prevent the “painting”), but need the memory issue fixed first. :)

Does your image module contain the JS code you were referring to that hides the image until it’s rendered?

@sdetweil said in Third-Party Module - how to get help?:

app.commandLine.appendSwitch(‘disable-http-cache’);

Thanks. I have made the change and restarted the mirror.

I’m running with only this module and the clock enabled and am finding that having the image caching disabled (so far) is significantly slowing down the rendering of the images on screen.

Is there a way to set the node.js maximum memory or set a limit on cache size? I have found some commentary that seems to say that node.js will use up to 1.7G of RAM by default and have no idea if there is anything in any of these configuration files that would lower that limit using the settings:

--max-old-space-size={limit in KB} --optimize-for-size --max-executable-size={limit in KB}

Given that my system is 1GB of RAM, and the default for node.js is to use up to 1.7GB, I could see where it could conceivably be trying to use memory beyond the bounds of the system, especially if there were some sort of issue with the underlying OS and its interaction with node.js to control the memory usage.

I thought I would follow this up as I have found and solved this specific issue.

Long story short, this particular module has a pre-defined list of file extensions that it will recognize as images. For some reason, I pulled a copy of image files from two different locations and the extension changed from JPG to JPEG. The former is default, the latter is not. I updated the module configuration and it started working again.

I also discovered that the module is running out of memory while running. The error seems to be very consistent although the image in place when it crashes is not. I’ve posted an issue to the module owner’s repository to see what help that might bring.