Kill NodeJS child processes

Question

Kill NodeJS child processes

During development I make mistakes in my NodeJS project. Mistakes lead to an error message like this.

events.js:85
      throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
            ^
Error: listen EADDRINUSE
    at exports._errnoException (util.js:742:11)
    at Server._listen2 (net.js:1148:14)
    at listen (net.js:1170:10)
    at net.js:1253:9
    at dns.js:82:18
    at process._tickCallback (node.js:343:11)

No problem, I hit ctrl+C and restart the process but I see some spawned child processes still active. How can I kill all processes spawned by the root process?

Sample code:

module.exports.start = function(options) {
  gulp.watch(['*.js'], onServerRestart);
  onServerRestart();

  var server;
  function onServerRestart(e) {
    if (server) server.kill();
    server = require('child_process').spawn("node", ['--harmony', './server.js'], {stdio: "inherit", cwd: process.cwd() });
  };
};

node.js
gulp
spawning

Answer 1

Adding this

  process.on('uncaughtException', function(err) {
    console.log(err);
    server.kill();
    process.kill();
  });

solves the problem. Any suggestions how to handle this in your app?

Answer 2

This means, even though you may think you exited all servers, one is indeed still running, and that maybe the server you are trying to access.

Therefore go to your terminal and type the following:

killall node

This should solve it.

BAM.