node js listen EADDRINUSE error for simple httpserver

Question

I have simple node js http server.

var http = require("http");

http.createServer(function(request, response) {
  response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
  response.write("Hello World");
  response.end();
}).listen(8888);

If I run

node basicserver.js 

I get

node.js:201
        throw e; // process.nextTick error, or 'error' event on first tick
              ^
Error: listen EADDRINUSE
    at errnoException (net.js:642:11)
    at Array.0 (net.js:743:26)
    at EventEmitter._tickCallback (node.js:192:40)

I have seen this post, but that post seems to be specific to TCP server and not http server. Could anyone please help.

Answer 1

The port you are listening to is already being listened by another process. In this case I got a feeling that it is your self. You can do a ps aux | grep node and then using kill <pid> kill your node process. Beside that you can also try another port.

--Update--

In case if you want to find which process is listening, you can use netstat -lpn ( -l is to find out the listening ports, -p is to include the process name and pid, -n is to not to resolve host names, or else it will be slow), to find the processes that are listening on different ports. If there was too many, you can do netstat -lnp | grep :8888.

Also can use, fuser 8888/tcp, which will show you the process pid and also adding -k will kill the process, fastest way ever.

I realized this two commands only work in linux.