Why can I not kill my child process in nodejs on w

Question

exec = require('child_process').exec;

child = exec('node child.js');
child.stdout.pipe(process.stdout);
child.kill('SIGKILL');

function wait() {
    setTimeout(wait, 1000);
    child.kill('SIGKILL');
}
wait();

The above code does not work. The child starts and will continue to write output indefinitely. I can not figure out how to kill this child process. I am running node v0.11.9 in Windows 7. I know that Windows does not use POSIX signals but sending it 'WM_QUIT' results in an exception. Is my best solution to setup an event protocol on stdin?

Answer 1

Just an update

Now this code works (tested with Node.js 8.9.3 and Windows 10):

spawn = require('child_process').spawn;
child = spawn('node', ['child.js']);

setTimeout(function() {
    child.kill();
    }, 5000
);

Answer 2

If you want to be able to kill child processes via SIGKILL, use spawn instead, as spawn will create a child process (instead of a new shell like exec:

var exec = require('child_process').spawn;

Alternatively, you could pass the timeout parameter to exec, which will kill the process after that many milliseconds.

child = exec('node child.js', { timeout: 1000 });

Answer 3

This still doesn't work for me with the current accepted answer. A work around on windows you can use is to call upon the windows taskkill program to kill the child process for you. Not quite as nice but it works. When you spawn the child you get a ProcessID (pid) stored in the child object returned when spawning, you can use with taskkill to kill the process.

var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;    
spawn("taskkill", ["/pid", child.pid, '/f', '/t']);

Answer 4

check this code it worked for me.

    var killer = require('child_process');

    killer=exec('taskkill /F /pid '+child.pid);

Here killer is a variable and child is your child process. when you create a child process it has many attributes associated with it and pid is one of them. for more details on child process attributes and function check this node.js child process.

This program is to kill child process in windows environment.

Answer 5

I had to use the following package to kill my child process:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/tree-kill

The regular .kill command wouldn't work for me either on a raspberry pi.