How I Killed a Process Without lsof

Hello All,

Today I faced a challenge while trying to kill a process in a cloud-hosted IDE. A port was already occupied, and I wanted to kill the process. So I tried using: lsof

But it showed command not found.

I was so shocked — this is the first time I am seeing the error, lsof command not found.

So without any further delay, I asked ChatGPT about this error. It gave me a few recommendations like:

1. Using netstat

netstat -tulnp | grep 8090

But the problem is the netstat command was also not found. So what’s next?

2. Using ss

ss -ltnp | grep 8090

But again, the same problem — ss was also not found. Then what next?

Finally, one command worked, which is fuser:

3. Using fuser

fuser 8090/tcp

To kill the process, use the fuser command. I used it because in my case the pkill command was also not found:

fuser -k 8090/tcp

What is fuser?

fuser is a Linux command used to find which process is using a file, directory, or network port.

Think of it as: “Show me which process is using this resource.”

When something is not working, you end up learning something new. Today I learned this new Linux command.

What is one new Linux command you learned recently?

See you tomorrow.