How do I prevent Drupal raising a segmentation fault when using a Node.js theming workflow?

Question

Symptoms:

Some drush commands fail; Some Drupal pages are blank.
The failing drush commands report "Segmentation fault: 11"
The Apache log (e.g. php-error.log in MAMP) also shows the same error.

Background:

If you use a gulp or grunt workflow - to compile your theme's SASS etc. - you may run into a problem where drush commands throw a segmentation fault 11 as does Apache whilst serving Drupal pages as blanks (WSDs).

Probable cause

This is because files from your grunt or gulp workflow environment in node_modules are erroneously being registered by Drupal itself as a bi-product of drush cache-clear all for example. There are dozens of these .js files and Drupal can't handle them ... it's possibly a PCRE regex that is the root cause as this is known elsewhere. Anyway ...

It doesn't always happen

It's not clear whether some modules (like Browser Sync for example) induce this error as a node.js style (i.e. gulp or grunt) workflow can work perfectly before failing in this way.

Answer 1

Here is the solution you're looking for. Much more elegant and less work:

"scripts": {
  "postinstall": "find node_modules/ -name '*.info' -type f -delete"
}

Just a slight alteration on @iamcarico's answer above.

note: you may need a .npmrc with just the following content:

unsafe-perm = true

Answer 2

So, I have a slightly more elegant solution, that will just remove the .info files after npm install. None are needed, so this Should be safe.

Add the following to the end of your package.json:

"scripts": {
  "postinstall": "find node_modules/ -name \"*.info\" -type f -delete"
}

Answer 3

This works for me:

(With many thanks to @jorgegc for identifying the cause in this thread at d.o. I thought the topic deserved a more general title here.)

1. Move gulpfile.js and package.json to the new "hidden" directory .npm
2. cd .npm and npm install (after having deleted theme root level node_modules directory of course)
3. edit gulpfile.js base directory for source and destination file paths.e.g. In the snippet bellow "../" were prepended to paths
4. in turn, invoke gulp command from within the .npm directory

Example directory structure for ihit theme

. ├── .editorconfig ├── .git │   ├── HEAD │   ├── ... ├── .gitignore ├── .jshintrc ├── .npm │   ├── gulpfile.js │   ├── node_modules │   └── package.json ├── assets │   ├── images │   ├── js │   └── sass ├── css │   ├── ihit.hacks.css │   └── ihit.styles.css ├── ihit.info ├── ihit.sublime-project ├── ihit.sublime-workspace ├── images │   ├── logo.png │   ├── search-icon.png │   └── sprite.png ├── js │   └── ihit.behaviors.js ├── php │   ├── ihit_breadcrumb.inc │   ├── ihit_form_search_form_alter.inc │   ├── ihit_menu_link.inc │   ├── ihit_menu_tree.inc │   ├── ihit_preprocess_html.inc │   ├── ihit_preprocess_region.inc │   └── ihit_process_page.inc ├── research │   └── Refills ├── screenshot.png ├── template.php └── templates ├── html.tpl.php ├── node--image_gallery.tpl.php ├── node.tpl.php └── page.tpl.php

Head of gulpfile.js

// project-specific var project = { path: { sass: { source: '../assets/sass/**/*.scss', css_dest: '../css' }, // sass . . .

Answer 4

You can avoid all of this by installing your workflow tools in the root of the Drupal site. It won't scan a top-level node_modules folder.

Installing at root-level also has other benefits, like allowing you to lint your entire project in a uniform fashion (your custom modules, Features, and themes can share this root-level config). Provided you group sites/all/modules into contrib and custom subdirectories, you can easily ignore contrib and other vendor folders.

Answer 5

It still seems to be a problem and I also got the following error: Segmentation fault: 11 after running npm install.

I use gulp version 3.8.11 and node with the version 0.12.

I usually (in this case too) use aurora as base theme and use an own package.json and gulp.js file. My package.json file contains iamcarrico's postinstall script:

  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "find node_modules -type f -name '*.info' | xargs rm;"
  }

Hmm, at this point I just recognized that the postinstall script is slightly different which might have caused my Segmentation fault error. Anyway.

What I did was I removed the node_modules directory within my theme with rm -rf ./node_modules. Cleared the cache with drush drush cc all. Then I followed the above instructions of iainh ... until no. 3 (3 not included), ran find node_modules -type f -name '*.info' | xargs rm; inside the .npm folder and moved the gulp.js, package.json and the node_modules folder one level up to the original theme folder. I could run gulp without segmentation errors and even browsersync worked as expected.

Answer 6

Here is the issue on drupal.org which addresses this problem, including patch https://www.drupal.org/node/2329453

Answer 7

my solution was in the past to move the node stuff inside of a hidden folder like ".npm" for example.