buffer.toString fails for buffers larger than 192MB

[skilledDeveloper]

buffer.toString with base64 encoding fails for any buffer larger than or equal to 201326581 bytes (~192 MB).

See the following piece of code:

var buf1 = new Buffer(201326580),  //biggest buffer that works
    buf2 = new Buffer(201326581);  //~192 MB
buf1.toString('base64'); //works
buf2.toString('base64'); //fails!

For older node versions (like v0.12.2) this cause the process to crash with this error:

#
# Fatal error in d:\jenkins\workspace\nodejs-msi-julien\d8c2e2bb\deps\v8\src/handles.h, line 48
# CHECK(location_ != NULL) failed
#
Segmentation fault      

For newer versions (like v5.2.0), it gives the following error:

buffer.js:401
    throw new Error('toString failed');
    ^

[ChALkeR]

Probably a dupe of #3175

[bnoordhuis]

Slightly more representative tests:

Buffer(268435440).toString('binary');  // ok
Buffer(268435441).toString('binary');  // crashes in v0.12

Nominally a V8 bug due to the use of .ToHandleChecked() in deps/v8/src/api.cc. We could work around it by checking that length < 268435441 before calling v8::String::NewExternal() in src/string_bytes.cc.

I'm not going to work on it but if someone wants to pick it up, I'll review the patches.

[skilledDeveloper]

@bnoordhuis
I'll work on it.

[silverwind]

Is v4 also affected?

[skilledDeveloper]

Yes. but it doesn't crash the process.

[RohanGada]

Unable to read a 40MB xlsx due to this.
mongod 3.0.6
Node 0.12.7

[trevnorris]

@RohanGada Mind opening another issue with test case we can look at? Your issue will probably go unnoticed within an already closed issue.

EDIT: This isn't a closed issue yet. Don't know why I thought so.

[RohanGada]

Okay

[lprimeroo]

Is this fixed ?

[silverwind]

#4394 has yet to land.

[wmbutler]

Curious to know if there's been any progress on this yet? I'm running v5.6.0 and still seeing this behavior.

[trevnorris]

Best I can figure this is a v8 bug. Unfortunately my v8 foo isn't good enough to track this down. /cc @indutny want to track down a v8 crash? :)

[wmbutler]

I had to bypass node and use bash with jq to parse large base64 objects through bash.

[davidrapin]

This issue is a duplicate of #3175

[skilledDeveloper]

@davidrapin It's not duplicate.
This is about an unhanded exception which breaks the process.

[davidrapin]

Ok got it, just found out what the v0.12 tag meant ;)

[jasnell]

Closing this given that support for v0.12 is coming to a close in two days and there will not be any further updates to the v0.12 branch.