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reboot Command Cheat Sheet

reboot restarts the system. It is essentially a shortcut for shutdown -r now.

Synopsis

reboot [OPTIONS]

Basic Usage

sudo reboot

Force Reboot (-f)

If the system processes are hanging and preventing a clean shutdown, you can force it. Warning: This does not stop services or unmount disks safely. Data corruption possible.

sudo reboot -f

Logging the Reboot (-w)

Don't actually reboot, just write a reboot record to the /var/log/wtmp file.

sudo reboot -w

View Last Reboots

To see when the system was rebooted in the past.

last reboot

Or check uptime: 

uptime -s
(Shows time since last boot).

  • shutdown -r now: The "polite" way.
  • init 6: The classic SysVinit way.
  • systemctl reboot: The Systemd way.

Notes

  • On most modern systems, reboot is a symlink to systemctl.
  • Magic SysRq: If the kernel is completely frozen (kernel panic) and reboot doesn't work, you might need the Magic SysRq key combination (Alt + SysRq + REISUB) to safely reboot.