| fuser -n tcp -ikv 8080

This isn't available on BSD systems.

I'm sure this is a Linux only utility,

Actually, at least on our RedHats it's called lsof (LiSt Open Files). As far as I know, it won't kill for you, but I've been using it a lot to counter situations a lot like Dieter's (I missed his original story somehow). In my case, the stuck processes were little Oracle threads (processes?). lsof -i lists internet files with the processes that hold them. "lsof -i | grep 8080" became an idiom. I haven't gotten yet to the part where I awk the output to get a list of pids to kill, but I might... Have fun, Shai.