Trying to run my Node.js program, which has worked for a long time, and now it is suddenly... not. I'm trying to figure out the problem, and I figured it would be helpful if I posted here to try to track it down. Here's the log output:

events.js:154
    throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
    ^

Error: write EPIPE
    at exports._errnoException (util.js:856:11)
    at WriteWrap.afterWrite (net.js:767:14)

Quite frankly I have no clue why it's throwing an EPIPE error, I've checked that there's nothing running that could interfere and it's running in the exact same shell as it has before. If there's anything I should add let me know.

Trying to run my Node.js program, which has worked for a long time, and now it is suddenly... not. I'm trying to figure out the problem, and I figured it would be helpful if I posted here to try to track it down. Here's the log output:

events.js:154
    throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
    ^

Error: write EPIPE
    at exports._errnoException (util.js:856:11)
    at WriteWrap.afterWrite (net.js:767:14)

Quite frankly I have no clue why it's throwing an EPIPE error, I've checked that there's nothing running that could interfere and it's running in the exact same shell as it has before. If there's anything I should add let me know.

• javascript
• node.js
• epipe

• Related to github.com/npm/npm/issues/11153? – Bergi Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 1:20

2 Answers 2

Quoting doc

EPIPE: A write on a pipe, socket, or FIFO for which there is no process to read the data. Commonly encountered at the net and http layers, indicative that the remote side of the stream being written to has been closed.

The steam maybe a pipe or socket when the other end has terminated the connection. It's a run-time error; there is nothing you can do but close your end as well.

Please check if there is one big file written or long http package request in your program.

With the following code could make your program exit successfully in this case:

process.stdout.on('error', function( err ) {
    if (err.code == "EPIPE") {
        process.exit(0);
    }
});

In my case, the issue was with the number of inotify watchers as discussed in this question

And here is the original listen documentation

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p