Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: Cloudflare (Railgun discontinued 31 January 2024)
Railgun was a Cloudflare service that compressed traffic between Cloudflare and your server using a listener installed on the server. Cloudflare discontinued it on 31 January 2024; existing Railgun listeners no longer work and should be removed.
Remove an old Railgun listener
systemctl disable --now railgun # or: service railgun stop dnf remove railgun-stable # AlmaLinux / Rocky (yum on CentOS) apt remove railgun-stable # Ubuntu / Debian
Also remove the Railgun repository file from /etc/yum.repos.d/ or /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, and close its port (2408) in the firewall.
What to use instead
- Caching: Cloudflare's cache rules and Cache Reserve for static and cacheable pages, plus a page cache on your server.
- Faster connections to your server: Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing (paid), or Cloudflare Tunnel, which also hides your server's IP.
- Compression: enable Brotli/gzip on your server; Cloudflare compresses responses to visitors automatically.
Check that nothing is left running
ps aux | grep [r]g-listener ss -tlnp | grep 2408
Both commands should print nothing. Remove the old configuration file /etc/railgun/railgun.conf if it is still there.
