Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected.

mem-leak-warn.js

var http = require('http');

var options = {
	host : 'www.nodejs.org',
	port : 80,
	method : 'HEAD',
	path : '/api/http.html'
};

for( var i = 0 ; i < 10000 ; ++i ) {
	var req = http.request(options, function(res) {
	});
	req.setTimeout(600, function() {
		console.log('timed out');
	});
    req.end();
}

Yup - the leak occurs at https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/v0.6.19-release/lib/http.js#L1379. This can be bad for long lived reused connections.

To elaborate, EventEmitter.on is called for every setTimeout - so the listeners get piled up at https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/v0.6.19-release/lib/events.js#L160.

I guess the fix is just a matter of setTimeout removing the event listener when it fires?

@ronkorving - not sure if that helps as listeners accumulate with each call to setTimeout. It does not matter whether any request times out or not.

Link to the issue: nodejs/node-v0.x-archive#3505

Actually the above test does not demonstrate connection reuse!

I retract my first two comments. http.request returns a new ClientRequest each time - ClientRequest is an EventEmitter - and hence timeout listeners don't pile up when a connection is reused.

See https://gist.github.com/2973367 for a variant of the test. The leak warning comes up when a new request is created using a socket that has outstanding requests. You can verify this by setting the agent to false in which case the socket has no outstanding requests. This explains why this warning comes up under load with the default agent.

See https://gist.github.com/joyent/node/blob/v0.6.19-release/lib/net.js#L143.