"The flow server is not responding"

[mvolkmann]

I get this message when trying to start the flow server on a Mac by just entering "flow".
I do not have a flow server running in a different terminal.
I installed flow with "npm install -g flow-bin".
I did not install it using homebrew.

[samwgoldman]

Thanks for reporting!

If you still have the terminal output around, or you are able to reproduce the issue, can you provide a verbatim transcript of your session? (Or at least as much as you can/feel comfortably with.)

That particular error message should be accompanied by more output, specifically a) the number of retries remaining and b) some status like [parsing], [merging inference] or [processing].

Also, Flow should have output a path to a log file. The contents of that log file would be enormously helpful to debug this issue.

[mvolkmann]

Here is the session output:

flow$ flow
Launching Flow server for /Users/Mark/Documents/training/React/react-examples/flow
Spawned flow server (child pid=5640)
Logs will go to /private/tmp/flow/zSUserszSMarkzSDocumentszStrainingzSReactzSreact-exampleszSflow.log
Launching Flow server for /Users/Mark/Documents/training/React/react-examples/flow
Spawned flow server (child pid=5668)
Logs will go to /private/tmp/flow/zSUserszSMarkzSDocumentszStrainingzSReactzSreact-exampleszSflow.log
Launching Flow server for /Users/Mark/Documents/training/React/react-examples/flow
Spawned flow server (child pid=5695)
Logs will go to /private/tmp/flow/zSUserszSMarkzSDocumentszStrainingzSReactzSreact-exampleszSflow.log
Launching Flow server for /Users/Mark/Documents/training/React/react-examples/flow
Spawned flow server (child pid=5722)
Logs will go to /private/tmp/flow/zSUserszSMarkzSDocumentszStrainingzSReactzSreact-exampleszSflow.log
The flow server is not responding (0 retries remaining): [processing] /
Out of retries, exiting!
flow$

Here is the log file content:

[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Initializing Server (This might take some time)
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] executable=/usr/local/lib/node_modules/flow-bin/vendor/flow
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] version=0.22.0
/Users/Mark/Documents/training/React/react-examples/flow/flow-libs/ No such file or directory
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Parsing
/Users/Mark/Documents/training/React/react-examples/flow/public No such file or directory
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Building package heap
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Running local inference
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Re-resolving directly dependent files
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Calculating dependencies
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Merging
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Done
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Server is READY
[2016-02-20 22:32:53] Took 0.480581 seconds to initialize.
Fatal error: exception End_of_file

[mvolkmann]

I think I see the problem. Here is my .flowconfig file:

[ignore]
.*/node_modules

[include]
public
../node_modules/

[libs]
flow-libs/

[options]
module.name_mapper='.css$' -> 'empty/object'

Note how it references the directories flow-libs and public. Those directories didn't exist. After I added those, it worked. Maybe error messages that describe that issue could be added or maybe that shouldn't be an error.

[samwgoldman]

Thanks! We absolutely should fix the error message here. What's happening
is an unhandled exception that crashes the server, which we need to catch.
Will attempt to repro using the information provided.
On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:15 AM Mark Volkmann notifications@github.com
wrote:

I think I see the problem. Here is my .flowconfig file:

[ignore]
.*/node_modules

[include]
public
../node_modules/

[libs]
flow-libs/

[options]
module.name_mapper='.css$' -> 'empty/object'

Note how it references the directories flow-libs and public. Those
directories didn't exist. After I added those, it worked. Maybe error
messages that describe that issue could be added or maybe that shouldn't be
an error.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#1428 (comment).

[mroch]

Pretty sure we fixed this crash in 0.26 or 0.27. Let me know if it happens again!

[techrah]

This happened to me today with flow 0.37.4. I ended up rebooting to get it to work again.

[imoby]

This is still happening to me as well

[suark]

Getting this error when running it

$ yarn run flow
yarn run v0.21.3
$ "C:\Users\Brian\dev\personal\website\node_modules\.bin\flow"
Launching Flow server for C:\Users\Brian\dev\personal\website
Spawned flow server (pid=1148)
Logs will go to C:\Users\Brian\AppData\Local\Temp\flow\CzCzBUserszB
BrianzBdevzBpersonalzBwebsite.log
flow is still initializing; this can take some time. [local inferen
flow is still initializing; this can take some time. [merging infer
flow is still initializing; this can take some time. [merging infer
flow is still initializing; this can take some time. [merging infer
The flow server is not responding (3 retries remaining): [processin
The flow server is not responding (2 retries remaining): [processin
The flow server is not responding (1 retry remaining): [processing]
The flow server is not responding (0 retries remaining): [processin
g] /
Out of retries, exiting!
error Command failed with exit code 7.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation ab
out this command.

[antonellil]

It is happening still with 0.46.0 on windows

[darekkay]

There is another (open) issue: #3323

[Saturate]

This happens for me when I use the following configuration on Windows 10.

[ignore]
.*/node_modules/stylelint/.*
[include]

[libs]

[options]

[nahuelhds]

Folks, in my case (I'm on Windows 10) the issue were resolved by running watchman watch-del-all and then uninstalling watchman. It seems just weird but anytime I install watchman flow doesn't work.

[strizzwald]

This is still happening. I experienced on windows 10. I removed the contents of .flowconfig re-ran flow and added the contents of .flowconfig back.

[Jorundur]

I just experienced this on macOS High Sierra, couldn't fix using any of the ideas above.
However, soon my mac got quite noisy so I opened up Activity Monitor and saw that flow was using 37GB of Memory. I quit it in Activity Monitor and that fixed it, running flow again works now.