[ruby-on-rails] Can't stop rails server

I am new to rails and I am using an ubuntu machine and the rubymine IDE. The problem is that I am unable to stop the rails server. I tried to stop the server by killing the rails process. But, when I run pgrep -l rails, no such process is found. So, I am only able to kill ruby processes, but, the server won't stop.

I tried ./script/server stop (since I started it by running ./script/server start), but, that didn't work. Googling around and finding some stackoverflow posts, I tried to change the localhost port's listening port but without success. Could someone help?

This question is related to ruby-on-rails

The answer is


it's as simple as

pkill -9 ruby

nothing more nothing less


you can use grep command in following way,

ps aux | grep rails

and then

kill -9 {process_id} 

I have noticed on Windows (Im using 10 but not sure if the same for oler). If you use cmd.exe and ctrl + c the raisl server stops correctly.

However, if you use Git Bash, it doesn't. It says it has but when you look at the tmp pids, its still there.

Maybe a bug with git bash?


killall -9 ruby will kill all the ruby processes, and at-least on my machine, rails servers appear as ruby processes. killall -9 rails is much more specific and doesn't work for older versions of rails servers (it gives a 'rails:no process found' because the process is named ruby)

Encountered this problem a while ago. After submitting a form in activeadmin, the rails server just hanged and I was unable to kill it using normal means (even after ctrl+z it was still running in the background). Learner's answer helped, but this command doesn't need process id.


Follow these steps:

  1. open your project
  2. select in tmp folder
  3. select pids folder
  4. delete server.pid file
  5. now start your rails server

If you are using a more modern version of Rails and it uses Puma as the web server, you can run the following command to find the stuck Puma process:

ps aux | grep puma

It will result in output similar to this:

85923 100.0  0.8  2682420 131324 s004  R+    2:54pm   3:27.92 puma 3.12.0 (tcp://0.0.0.0:3010) [my-app]
92463   0.0  0.0  2458404   1976 s008  S+    3:09pm   0:00.00 grep puma

You want the process that is not referring to grep. In this case, the process ID is 85923.

I can then run the following command to kill that process:

kill -9 85923

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For my windows 10 machine, Ctrl - C + Ctrl - D works.


Use ctrl+c to shutdown your Webrick Server.

Unfortunately if its not works then forcefully close the terminal and restart it.

Another trick is that

1. open your system-monitor(a gui application) on ubuntu

2. Select processes tab 

3. Then look for a process having name 'ruby'

4. End that process

Ctrl-Z should normally do the trick.


  1. Just open the file using the location given sudo vi /Users/user1/go/src/github.com/rails_app/rails_project/tmp/pids/server.pid

  2. find the process_id / thread_id at which the process is runnning.

  3. Kill the specified process / thread using kill -9 84699


On rails 6 using

ps aux | grep rails was not returning the server process

I had to do

ps aux | grep puma

to find the actual process and then kill it using

kill -9 {process_id}


I generally use:

killall ruby

OR

pkill -9 ruby

which will kill all ruby related processes that are running like rails server, rails console, etc.


One super easy way would be

gem install shutup

then go in the current folder of your rails project and run

shutup # this will kill the Rails process currently running

You can use the command 'shutup' every time you want

DICLAIMER: I am the creator of this gem

NOTE: if you are using rvm install the gem globally

rvm @global do gem install shutup

Delete the server.pid from tmp/pids folder. In my case, the error was: A server is already running. Check /home/sbhatta/myapp/tmp/pids/server.pid.

So, I delete server.pid

rm /home/sbhatta/myapp/tmp/pids/server.pid then run rails s


pkill -9 rails to kill all the process of rails

Updated answer

ps aux|grep 'rails'|grep -v 'grep'|awk '{ print $2 }'|xargs kill -9

This will kill any running rails process. Replace 'rails' with something else to kill any other processes.


On my MAC the killall -9 rails does not work. But killall -9 ruby does.


check the /tmp/tmp/server.pid

there is a pid inside.

Usually, I ill do "kill -9 THE_PID" in the cmd


It is late for this question. Here is my 2 cents. I made a rake task for stopping the server when I don't have access to it. I only tested on Mac though.

With this you can simply add it to your project then run the rake command.

Here you go:

Gist link: -latest version will be here. https://gist.github.com/houmanka/289184ca5d8d92de0499#file-server-rake

Some code in here:

# Make a file under: `project_root/lib/tasks/server.rake`

# Then paste the following code

    namespace :server do
      desc "Stop the running server by killing the PID"
      task :kill do
        STDOUT.puts "Enter port number: "
        post_number = STDIN.gets.strip
        system "pid=$(lsof -i:#{post_number.to_i} -t); kill -TERM $pid || kill -KILL $pid"
      end
    end

# Then to use it in the terminal: `rake server:kill`

Following are steps to kill server process:

1. lsof -i tcp:3000

2. kill -9 1234

where 1234 is the PID of process: localhost:3000 display in step 1.

OR

Remove file(server.pid) under Rails.root/tmp/pids/ and restart server.

OR

open app in another port by using command:

rails s -p 3001


1. Simply Delete the pid file from rails app directory

Rails_app -> tmp -> pids -> pid file

Delete the file and run

rails start


2. For Rails 5.0 and above, you can use this command

rails restart


We can kill rails session on Linux using PORT no

fuser -k 3000/tcp 

here 3000 is a port no. Now restart your server, you will see your server is in running state.


Also, Make sure that you are doing command Cntrl+C in the same terminal (tab) which is used to start the server.

In my case, I had 2 tabs but i forgot to stop the server from correct tab and i was wondering why Cntrl+C is not working.


When the rails server does not start it means that it is already running then you can start by using new port eg.

rails s -p 3001

or it starts and stops in that case you want to delete temp folder in rails directory structure it starts the rails server.


Step 1: find what are the items are consuming 3000 port.

lsof -i:3000

step 2 : Find the process named

For Mac

ruby      TCP localhost:hbci (LISTEN)

For Ubuntu

ruby      TCP *:3000 (LISTEN)

Step 3: Find the PID of the process and kill it.

kill -9 PID

I used killall -9 rails like Sri suggested and it didn't work. I adjusted the command to killall -9 ruby and the server closed immediately.

Tl;dr: killall -9 ruby


Press Ctrl - C it will stop
if not check