Node / Express: EADDRINUSE, Address already in use - Kill server

I hit this on my laptop running win8. this worked.

Run cmd.exe as 'Administrator':

C:\Windows\System32>taskkill /F /IM node.exe
SUCCESS: The process "node.exe" with PID 11008 has been terminated.

process.on('exit', ..) isn't called if the process crashes or is killed. It is only called when the event loop ends, and since server.close() sort of ends the event loop (it still has to wait for currently running stacks here and there) it makes no sense to put that inside the exit event...

On crash, do process.on('uncaughtException', ..) and on kill do process.on('SIGTERM', ..)

That being said, SIGTERM (default kill signal) lets the app clean up, while SIGKILL (immediate termination) won't let the app do anything.

You can also go the command line route:

ps aux | grep node

to get the process ids.

Then:

kill -9 PID

Doing the -9 on kill sends a SIGKILL (instead of a SIGTERM). SIGTERM has been ignored by node for me sometimes.

First, you would want to know which process is using port 3000

sudo lsof -i :3000

this will list all PID listening on this port, once you have the PID you can terminate it with the following:

kill -9 {PID}