How to Stop a Hanging NodeJS Process

Once in a while you find yourself needing to terminate a hanging Node process manually.

While hanging Node processes are a rare case, they can happen from time to time which is why below commands will come in handy.

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To list all Linux processes with some extra information about its origin, use this command:

$ ps -ef -A

Using Grep to List Node Processes

You can also list Node processes only with a grep search:

$ ps -ef | grep node

This will show a list of running Node processes with their process ID pid. Let us assume that the pid is 1234, you would kill it with:

$ kill 1234

Stop All Node Processes

In the event you want to kill all Node processes at once:

$ pkill -f node

The Difference Between kill and pkill

The kill command is a wrapper to the kill system call, which knows only about process IDs. pkill can determine the process ID based on things like, process name, owner of the process or session id.