Stop all instances of Node.js server

Question

I have started a Node server through the plugin of an IDE. Unfortunately, I cannot use the IDE's terminal. So I tried to run the script from the command line.

This is the problem - I am using the Express module and my app is listening some port (8080). When I start the app from the command line, it throws this error:

events.js:71
    throw arguments[1]; // Unhandled 'error' event
                   ^
Error: listen EADDRINUSE
    at errnoException (net.js:770:11)
    at HTTPServer.Server._listen2 (net.js:910:14)
    at listen (net.js:937:10)
    at HTTPServer.Server.listen (net.js:986:5)
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\xampp\htdocs\node\chat\app.js:5:5)
    at Module._compile (module.js:449:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:467:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
    at Module.runMain (module.js:492:10)

Even though I am not very sure what this error could be I assumed that it's because the app is listening on a port which is already in use. So I did:

netstat -an

I can see

TCP    0.0.0.0:8080           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING

It's because the Node server is already started when I tried to start it from the IDE.

So I want to know, how can I stop all server instances? Also if you can tell me how to detect what's running on a port and kill it.

Mirthless

Sorry I dint mention that I am on windows environment. Please post commands that are relevant. Thanks – Mirthless

and also you can find the node.js task in your windows taskmanager. find the progress which name is Node.js:Server-side...and open it's detail info,you will find the pid and detail of your nodejs progress – Sclerenchyma

This is the one worked for me: superuser.com/questions/1183057/… – Vampirism

Answer 1

Windows Machine:

Need to kill a Node.js server, and you don't have any other Node processes running, you can tell your machine to kill all processes named node.exe. That would look like this:

taskkill /im node.exe

And if the processes still persist, you can force the processes to terminate by adding the /f flag:

taskkill /f /im node.exe

If you need more fine-grained control and need to only kill a server that is running on a specific port, you can use netstat to find the process ID, then send a kill signal to it. So in your case, where the port is 8080, you could run the following:

C:\>netstat -ano | find "LISTENING" | find "8080"

The fifth column of the output is the process ID:

  TCP    0.0.0.0:8080           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING       14828
  TCP    [::]:8080              [::]:0                 LISTENING       14828

You could then kill the process with taskkill /pid 14828. If the process refuses to exit, then just add the /f (force) parameter to the command.

---

MacOS machine:

The process is almost identical. You could either kill all Node processes running on the machine:

killall node

Or also as alluded to in @jacob-groundwater's answer below using lsof, you can find the PID of a process listening on a port (pass the -i flag and the port to significantly speed this up):

$ lsof -Pi :8080
COMMAND   PID      USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
node     1073    urname   22u  IPv6  bunchanumbershere      0t0  TCP *:8080 (LISTEN)

The process ID in this case is the number underneath the PID column, which you could then pass to the kill command:

$ kill 1073

If the process refuses to exit, then just use the -9 flag, which is a SIGTERM and cannot be ignored:

$ kill -9 1073

---

Linux machine:

Again, the process is almost identical. You could either kill all Node processes running on the machine (use -$SIGNAL if SIGKILL is insufficient):

killall node

Or also using netstat, you can find the PID of a process listening on a port:

$ netstat -nlp | grep :8080
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8080         0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      1073/node

The process ID in this case is the number before the process name in the sixth column, which you could then pass to the kill command:

$ kill 1073

If the process refuses to exit, then just use the -9 flag, which is a SIGTERM and cannot be ignored:

$ kill -9 1073

Victorinavictorine

sorry , How exactly I can use these commands? process.exit() might be in code? but server is already started. It is likely that it is started with command node app.js but not node-dev app.js. And "node killall" is not working. Am I doing it wrong? Thank you – Mirthless

process.exit() in your application causes the NodeJS instance to close. killall node in bash would kill all NodeJS instances running on your machine. – Victorinavictorine

thanks @Victorinavictorine . I am developing on windows. Does that make killall node an invalid command because I cannot use it from command line. – Mirthless

Try taskkill /IM node.exe. It will kill all processes named node.exe. – Victorinavictorine

I had to use taskkill /F /IM node.exe to make it work, thanks! – Camaraderie

As much as you guys are anal about duplicates and what not. You should really try to update your answer cause technically, what was given is wrong – Patrilineage

These return status code 1 and fail all builds in VSTS. Any way around this? – Ehrsam

For the windows solution with -/f I get "There is no running instance of the task" – Vampirism

Excellent. For whatever reason a particular app won't close the express server when the terminal is closed, or the batch job is terminated, this was a great help so I didn't need to kill all the other node by guesswork. – Idiotism

Answer 2

Works for Linux, OS X

killall node

Maegan

Easy method but if any other application is running then we have to be more specific. – Corwin

does not work for me. node: no process found Also when I grep for a node processes which run on the specific port, the process ID has - instead of a number itself. – Bullivant

Answer 3

You can use lsof get the process that has bound to the required port.

Unfortunately the flags seem to be different depending on system, but on Mac OS X you can run

lsof -Pi | grep LISTEN

For example, on my machine I get something like:

mongod     8662 jacob    6u  IPv4 0x17ceae4e0970fbe9      0t0  TCP localhost:27017 (LISTEN)
mongod     8662 jacob    7u  IPv4 0x17ceae4e0f9c24b1      0t0  TCP localhost:28017 (LISTEN)
memcached  8680 jacob   17u  IPv4 0x17ceae4e0971f7d1      0t0  TCP *:11211 (LISTEN)
memcached  8680 jacob   18u  IPv6 0x17ceae4e0bdf6479      0t0  TCP *:11211 (LISTEN)
mysqld     9394 jacob   10u  IPv4 0x17ceae4e080c4001      0t0  TCP *:3306 (LISTEN)
redis-ser 75429 jacob    4u  IPv4 0x17ceae4e1ba8ea59      0t0  TCP localhost:6379 (LISTEN)

The second number is the PID and the port they're listening to is on the right before "(LISTEN)". Find the rogue PID and kill -9 $PID to terminate with extreme prejudice.

Culbreth

Hi Jacob , please can you edit answer and add windows version because I am developing on windows. Thank you – Mirthless

I have no idea how to do it on Windows, sorry Kiran. – Culbreth

This is a great answer, especially when there are multiple node servers running on different ports. I can easily distinguish the process ID's running on each port. – Orellana

lsof cmd not recognized. – Astir

Answer 4

Windows & GitBash Terminal I needed to use this command inside Windows / Webstorm / GitBash terminal

cmd "/C TASKKILL /IM node.exe /F"

Symbolic

This one did it for me. Thanks – Spoliate

This one did it for me as well. I found it fastest way to kill all node processes on Windows. – Buchheim

Answer 5

if you want to kill a specific node process , you can go to command line route and type:

ps aux | grep node

to get a list of all node process ids. now you can get your process id(pid), then do:

kill -9 PID

and if you want to kill all node processes then do:

killall -9 node

-9 switch is like end task on windows. it will force the process to end. you can do:

kill -l

to see all switches of kill command and their comments.

Evermore

This is the solution that worked for me in ubuntu – Cecilycecity

Answer 6

Linux

To impress your friends

ps aux | grep -i node | awk '{print $2}' | xargs  kill -9

But this is the one you will remember

killall node

Fdic

Answer 7

You can try this:

taskkill /IM node.exe -F

Syllabism

Answer 8

it works fine in windows 10

taskkill /f /im node.exe

Bunche

Answer 9

If you are using Windows, follow this:

1. Open task manager, look for this process:

2. Then just right click and "End task" it.

3. That's it, now all the npm commands run form the start.

Rothman

Answer 10

Multiplatform, stable, best solution:

use fkill to kill process which is taking your port:

fkill -f :8080

To install fkill use command: npm i -g fkill

Tappet

Thanks Dariusz. For anyone stumbling on this in 2021, it's npm i -g fkill-cli. – Koester

Answer 11

lsof -Pi :number-of-port e.g. 3000

then will appear something like that on your terminal

COMMAND   PID USER   FD   TYPE   DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
node    26476 node   30u  IPv6 63828225      0t0  TCP *:3000 (LISTEN)

kill PID-NUMBER-YOU-WANNA-KILL

e.g kill 26476

PID stands for Process ID

Schuller

Answer 12

You could also try:

killall nodejs

Samaveda

Answer 13

Am Using windows Operating system.

I killed all the node process and restarted the app it worked.

try

taskkill /im node.exe

Berceuse

Answer 14

in windows command Type command blow:

taskkill /f /im node.exe

Isiahisiahi

Answer 15

Use the following command to kill and restart node server from batch file

    @echo off
cd "D:\sam\Projects\Node"
taskkill /IM node.exe -F
start /min cmd /C "node index.js"
goto :EOF

Conte

Answer 16

Since you specified Windows. If you want to include this in a bat file, you might not want it to generate an error if the process is not running.

So, to prevent "ERROR: The process "node.exe" not found.", you can add a filter:

TASKKILL /F /IM node.exe /FI "PID gt 0"

Muleteer