"RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded" on Raspberry Pi

[julianlam]

Using bcryptjs 0.7.10, we are experiencing troubles using .hash() and .compare() on the Raspberry Pi.

Specifically, the operation crashes with a RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded error, but before it does that, it churns for about 2 minutes, and then outputs 100+ of these:

(node) warning: Recursive process.nextTick detected. This will break in the next version of node. Please use setImmediate for recursive deferral.

Of note: Ghost has run into this issue as well (they ran into it 4 months ago when they switched from bcrypt-nodejs to bcryptjs), but they don't exhibit the same errors, the hashing/comparing process just takes a really long time.

In both cases, a simple npm i bcrypt followed by replacing all instances of require('bcryptjs'); with require('bcrypt'); is an acceptable workaround, although people are left wondering why a pure JS implementation of bcrypt would take several orders of magnitude longer to hash or compare a password than a native implementation.

[dcodeIO]

I have changed the asynchronous behaviour to use setImmediate if available. Regarding computation time this is either related to the low level implementation used, which is not mine, or, more likely, a thing that JavaScript simply isn't nearly as good at as native code.

See also: https://github.com/dcodeIO/bcrypt.js/blob/master/src/bcrypt.js#L315

[julianlam]

Thanks for the quick response @dcodeIO! Will report back soon with results.

[julianlam]

Apparently, "soon" means "1 month". Anyhow, trying it again:

npm install bcryptjs@latest got me 0.7.12, which is right. The error no longer occurs on .compare() or .hash(), so 👍

The hashing process still doesn't complete on the RPi, but I suppose there's nothing you can do about that.