error: could not install smartsocket listener: Address already in use

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This article is about error message: “error: could not install smartsocket listener: Address already in use”.

I like to flash my android smartphone. As we all know, there are (at lease) two tools we could use when flashing phones: adb and fastboot. But I met a problem when I try to run new adb server, it keep showing the this message in my terminal:

The Message “error: could not install smartsocket listener: Address already in use”

“Address already in use? so there must be someone using the address I need.” I thought, “ok, let me find the criminal”

and I gave terminal a command ps aux | grep adb to show all processes which is including adb word, then I got:

wildsky   7456  0.1  0.0   9988  1916 ?        Ss   20:43   0:01 /home/wildsky/Desktop/FlashTool/x10flasher_lib/adb.linux.64 status-window
wildsky   7459  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    20:43   0:00 [adb.linux.64] <defunct>
wildsky   7499  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    20:43   0:00 [adb.linux.64] <defunct>
# ... there might be lots of defunct, just dismiss it.
wildsky   9752  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    20:56   0:00 [adb.linux.64] <defunct>
wildsky   9842  0.0  0.0 173840  2008 ?        Sl   20:57   0:00 adb -P 5037 fork-server server
wildsky  10705  0.0  0.0 119456   984 pts/1    S+   21:00   0:00 grep --color=auto adb

If I kill 9842 (adb -P 5037 fork-server server), it will become <defunct>, and create anthor adb -P 5037 fork-server server, which means if I just delete the surface progress, the criminal behind the scenes will still alive. In another words: I can’t kill adb server forever…

I already kill you but you still live. What's wrong with you, adb server?

However, I notice that there are two kinds of progress about adb: adb.linux.64 & adb -P 5037 fork-server server

just simply kill the first one, adb.linux.64 , via this command:

kill 7456

then kill adb -P 5037 fork-server server via:

kill 9842

and then problem solved! Now I could create adb server without showing any error message.

Why I write this article

I found there is no article about this problem, but there are some people facing this problem. And also, I used to meet this problem before, but it still take me some time to find the final problem.

So I decide to write down this problem, and copy the error message “error: could not install smartsocket listener: Address already in use”. Hope people who search this sentence could find this article, and they could save time from it. 🙂

References:

… maybe you might be interested in my other posts about android: http://blog.wildsky.cc/categories/android/.