Two further wins, both measured on a restored 28-widget board behind a real
demo session (scripts/benchmarks/stress-restore.mts).
--max-semi-space-size=4 in run.sh. --max-old-space-size only bounds the old
generation; V8 also sizes the young generation generously (16 MB per
semi-space) and that slack is pure resident memory. 4 MB cut idle anonymous
memory 120.0 -> 97.2 MiB and peak 710.6 -> 560.2 MiB. It costs CPU, as any
GC-space reduction does — 15.8 -> 17.1 CPU-seconds over the run, ~8% — with
no board-load latency regression (median 594 -> 570 ms). Overridable via
HOMARR_MAX_SEMI_SPACE_SIZE.
serverExternalPackages for the remaining server-only dependencies. Bundling
a package inlines its transitive graph into a chunk that is compiled at boot
even when the code path never runs; leaving it external makes it a lazy
require. Adding winston, drizzle-orm, ical.js, jszip, ldapts, node-unifi,
@kubernetes/client-node and linkedom took idle to 90.3 MiB and board-loaded
209.6 -> 164.6 MiB, with slightly lower CPU (16.3s) and latency (549 ms).
The trade-off is image size: 388 -> 401 MB, because those packages now ship
in node_modules instead of being tree-shaken into chunks.
Cumulative vs the merge-base: idle 141.7 -> 90.3 MiB (-36%), board loaded
257.8 -> 164.6 MiB (-36%), under load 392.7 -> 302.5 MiB (-23%).
The harness now proves the session rather than inferring it: it asserts an
anonymous request to the private board is denied, requires the Auth.js
session cookie after sign-in, and reports whether it had to modify the
restored data at all (now "none"). It also records cgroup CPU seconds and
board-load latency, so a memory win bought with CPU cannot hide.
pnpm test 144/144 files, 1795 tests; typecheck and lint clean.
Two fixes found by running the harness against a real pair of images:
Login submitted before the form hydrated, so the click was a no-op that
looked identical to bad credentials. Load the page at networkidle and
retry the submit, surfacing any page alert if all attempts fail — the
same race already handled for the onboarding restore toggle.
memory.current counts reclaimable page cache, which moved the "same"
baseline between 192 and 261 MiB across runs. Anonymous memory is now
the headline metric (idle was 144 MiB anon vs 77 MiB of page cache), so
an A/B is not decided by unrelated disk I/O.
Container memory was only ever measured on an empty install, which hides
the cost that actually matters: a real board with real widgets and
integrations loaded.
stress-restore.mts boots a fresh container, restores a supplied backup
through the onboarding restore UI (including the "I understand"
confirmation), signs in, opens the busiest board, waits for every widget
to mount, then hammers navigation and soaks idle while sampling cgroup
v2 memory at each stage.
The backup is passed by path via STRESS_BACKUP_ZIP and never enters the
repo — it carries real integration secrets and an encryption key.
.gitignore now also refuses homarr-backup*.zip and loose *.sqlite.
Baseline reading (merge-base image, 28-item board, all widgets ready):
223 MiB idle -> 448 MiB board loaded -> 688 MiB peak.
Thomas Camlong