Stop node.js program from command line

Question

I have a simple TCP server that listens on a port.

var net = require("net");

var server = net.createServer(function(socket) {
    socket.end("Hello!\n");
});

server.listen(7777);

I start it with node server.js and then close it with Ctrl+Z on Mac. When I try to run it again with node server.js I get this error message:

node.js:201
        throw e; // process.nextTick error, or 'error' event on first tick
          ^
Error: listen EADDRINUSE
at errnoException (net.js:670:11)
at Array.0 (net.js:771:26)
at EventEmitter._tickCallback (node.js:192:41)

Am I closing the program the wrong way? How can I prevent this from happening?

Answer 1

To end the program, you should be using Ctrl + C. If you do that, it sends SIGINT, which allows the program to end gracefully, unbinding from any ports it is listening on.

See also: https://superuser.com/a/262948/48624

Answer 2

Ctrl+Z suspends it, which means it can still be running.

Ctrl+C will actually kill it.

you can also kill it manually like this:

ps aux | grep node

Find the process ID (second from the left):

kill -9 PROCESS_ID

This may also work

killall node

Answer 3

Or alternatively you can do all of these in one line:

kill -9 $(ps aux | grep '\snode\s' | awk '{print $2}')

You can replace node inside '\snode\s' with any other process name.

Answer 4

Resume and kill the process:

Ctrl+Z suspends it, which means it is still running as a suspended background process.

You are likely now at a terminal prompt...

1. Give the command fg to resume the process in the foreground.

2. Type Ctrl+C to properly kill it.

---

Alternatively, you can kill it manually like this:

(NOTE: the following commands may require root, so sudo ... is your friend)

pkill -9 node

or, if you don't have pkill, this may work:

killall node

or perhaps this:

kill $(ps -e | grep node | awk '{print $1}')

sometimes the process will list its own grep, in which case you'll need:

kill $(ps -e | grep dmn | awk '{print $2}')

---

h/t @ruffin from the comments on the question itself. I had the same issue and his comment helped me solve it myself.

Answer 5

If you are running Node.js interactively (the REPL):

Ctrl + C will take back you to > prompt then type:

process.exit()

or just use Ctrl + D.

Answer 6

you can type .exit to quit node js REPL

Answer 7

on linux try: pkill node

on windows:

Taskkill /IM node.exe /F

or

from subprocess import call

call(['taskkill', '/IM', 'node.exe', '/F'])

Answer 8

$ sudo killall node in another terminal works on mac, while killall node not working:

$ killall node
No matching processes belonging to you were found

Answer 9

you can work following command to be specific in localserver kill(here: 8000)

http://localhost:8000/ kill PID(processId):

$:lsof -i tcp:8000

It will give you following groups of TCPs:

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME

node 21521 ubuntu 12u IPv6 345668 0t0 TCP *:8000 (LISTEN)

$:kill -9 21521

It will kill processId corresponding to TCP*:8000

Answer 10

You can use fuser to get what you want to be done.

In order to obtain the process ids of the tasks running on a port you can do:

fuser <<target_port>>/tcp

Let's say the port is 8888, the command becomes:

fuser 8888/tcp

And to kill a process that is running on a port, simply add -k switch.

fuser <<target_port>>/tcp -k

Example (port is 8888):

fuser 8888/tcp -k

That's it! It will close the process listening on the port. I usually do this before running my server application.

Answer 11

For MacOS

1. Open terminal

2. Run the below code and hit enter

    sudo kill $(sudo lsof -t -i:4200)
   

Answer 12

Though this is a late answer, I found this from NodeJS docs:

The 'exit' event is emitted when the REPL is exited either by receiving the .exit command as input, the user pressing <ctrl>-C twice to signal SIGINT, or by pressing <ctrl>-D to signal 'end' on the input stream. The listener callback is invoked without any arguments.

So to summarize you can exit by:

1. Typing .exit in nodejs REPL.
2. Pressing <ctrl>-C twice.
3. pressing <ctrl>-D.
4. process.exit(0) meaning a natural exit from REPL. If you want to return any other status you can return a non zero number.
5. process.kill(process.pid) is the way to kill using nodejs api from within your code or from REPL.

Answer 13

I'm adding this answer because for many projects with production deployments, we have scripts that stop these processes so we don't have to.

A clean way to manage your Node Server processes is using the forever package (from NPM).

Example:

Install Forever

npm install forever -g

Run Node Server

forever start -al ./logs/forever.log -ao ./logs/out.log -ae ./logs/err.log server.js

Result:

info: Forever processing file: server.js

Shutdown Node Server

forever stop server.js

Result

info: Forever stopped process: uid command script forever pid id logfile uptime [0] sBSj "/usr/bin/nodejs/node" ~/path/to/your/project/server.js 23084 13176 ~/.forever/forever.log 0:0:0:0.247

This will cleanly shutdown your Server application.

Answer 14

If you want to stop your server with npm stop or something like this. You can write the code that kill your server process as:

require('child_process').exec(`kill -9 ${pid}`)

Check this link for the detail: https://gist.github.com/dominhhai/aa7f3314ad27e2c50fd5

Answer 15

I ran into an issue where I have multiple node servers running, and I want to just kill one of them and redeploy it from a script.

Note: This example is in a bash shell on Mac.

To do so I make sure to make my node call as specific as possible. For example rather than calling node server.js from the apps directory, I call node app_name_1/app/server.js

Then I can kill it using:

kill -9 $(ps aux | grep 'node\ app_name_1/app/server.js' | awk '{print $2}')

This will only kill the node process running app_name_1/app/server.js.

If you ran node app_name_2/app/server.js this node process will continue to run.

If you decide you want to kill them all you can use killall node as others have mentioned.

Answer 16

Late answer but on windows, opening up the task manager with CTRL+ALT+DEL then killing Node.js processes will solve this error.

Answer 17

My use case: on MacOS, run/rerun multiple node servers on different ports from a script

run: "cd $PATH1 && node server1.js & cd $PATH2 && node server2.js & ..."

stop1: "kill -9 $(lsof -nP -i4TCP:$PORT1 | grep LISTEN | awk '{print $2}')"

stop2, stop3...

rerun: "stop1 & stop2 & ... & stopN ; run

for more info about finding a process by a port: Who is listening on a given TCP port on Mac OS X?

Answer 18

For windows first search the PID with your port number

netstat -ano | findStr "portNumber"

After that, kill the task, make sure you are in root of your "c" drive And the command will be taskkill /F /PID your pid

Answer 19

if you are using VS Code and terminal select node from the right side dropdown first and then do Ctrl + C. Then It will work

Press y when you are prompted.

Thanks