fs.read prevents process.exit in custom signal handler

Question

I cannot get my nodejs application to quit using process.exit() from within a signal handler. This is because I have a pending read operation on a Linux input event node (/dev/input/mouse1). I have spent several hours researching, but all I could find was this SO question. I tried using an fs.ReadStream like it is used there and call its destroy method, but it also did not work. Even by reading the nodejs source code I couldn't come up with an idea. Then there is this issue on github, which is somehow related.

So far, I came up with some hacks to work around this problem, but nothing clean:

1. Use something stronger than process.exit, maybe process.abort
2. Spawn a child process (childProcess.fork) to read which I can terminate from the parent process. But this will create a new nodejs instance with ~10mb memory usage.
3. Write a program in a language (C++) where I have better control over what's going on (using threads etc.) and call this from javascript. Although I would prefer staying in js-land.
4. Or maybe someone knows a tool which can help me achieve my goals in a different way? (See background information below). Maybe I don't have to use /dev/input/

Basically, I need a way to cancel pending read operations, either directly or indirectly (e.g. by clearing them from the active_handles list).
Thanks in advance for your answers!

Example

In the code example below, I can press ctrl+c, but nodejs will only exit after I move my mouse:

'use strict'
const fs = require('fs');

const buf = new Buffer(24);
const mouse = fs.openSync('/dev/input/mouse1', 'r');
const onRead = (err, bytesRead, buffer) => {
    console.log('read');
    if (!err) {
        process.nextTick(fs.read, mouse, buf, 0, buf.length, null, onRead);
    }
};
fs.read(mouse, buf, 0, buf.length, null, onRead);

process.on('SIGINT', () => {
    fs.closeSync(mouse);
    process.exit();
});

Background information

I am working on a small project based on a raspberry pi running a nodejs script. I want the program to respond both to user input via a usb mouse's scroll wheel as well as a GPIO-attached button. Therefore, I make use of the onoff library for the GPIO stuff. The onoff docs suggest to install a custom SIGINT handler to free resources before the program exits, so that's where this desire comes from. For handling the scroll wheel data without a window system or even a terminal, I eventually want to get this library to work, but now I have encountered the above problem.

Answer 1

Maybe a bit crude, but what about the following:

process.on('SIGINT', () => {
    fs.closeSync(mouse);
    setTimeout(process.exit, 1000);
});