Random zlib createBrotliDecompress problem when running my kafka consumer

[jerryhu]

Hey folks, I have a kafka consumer running its job on render server for my production workload. The render service randomly failed with this error message:

Nov 17 11:06:22 AM2261 |       "brotliDecompressSync",
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM2262 |       "createBrotliCompress",
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM2263 |       "createBrotliDecompress"
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM2264 |     ])
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM2265 | 
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM2266 |       exports[method] = function(buffer, opts, callback) {
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM                                                                   ^
Nov 17 11:06:22 AMerror: zlib.createBrotliDecompress is not implemented
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM      at node:zlib:2266:64
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM      at handleResponse (/opt/render/project/src/apps/processors/dist/index.js:43317:27)
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM      at /opt/render/project/src/apps/processors/dist/index.js:16863:6
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM      at /opt/render/project/src/apps/processors/dist/index.js:16521:6
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM      at node:http:902:28
Nov 17 11:06:22 AM      at processTicksAndRejections (:61:76)

I tried restarting my service a few times, and the error consistently showed up in about 5mins of processing.

I also cannot reproduce this error when running my kafka consumer locally.

My node version is 18.14.2

[jerryhu]

After digging a bit more, I believe this is a render platform bug.

Chat GPT says

zlib.createBrotliDecompress is not implemented error on Render.com, and you're using Node.js v18.14.2, it's indeed perplexing since zlib is a core module in Node.js and createBrotliDecompress should be available in that version

since zlib should be implemented in node version 11.7.0 already.

[jerryhu]

JK, I seem to be able to roproduce locally…