Linux: reboot command

This Linux tutorial explains how to use the Linux reboot command with syntax and arguments.

NAME

reboot, halt, poweroff - reboot or stop the system

SYNOPSIS

reboot [OPTION]...

halt [OPTION]...

poweroff [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION

These programs allow a system administrator to reboot, halt or poweroff the system.

When called with --force or when in runlevel 0 or 6, this tool invokes the reboot(2) system call itself and directly reboots the system. Otherwise this simply invokes the shutdown(8) tool with the appropriate arguments.

Before invoking reboot(2), a shutdown time record is first written to /var/log/wtmp

OPTIONS

-f, --force

Does not invoke shutdown(8) and instead performs the actual action you would expect from the name.

-p, --poweroff

Instructs the halt command to instead behave as poweroff.

-w, --wtmp-only

Does not call shutdown(8) or the reboot(2) system call and instead only writes the shutdown record to /var/log/wtmp

--verbose

Outputs slightly more verbose messages when rebooting, useful for debugging problems with shutdown.

ENVIRONMENT

RUNLEVEL

reboot will read the current runlevel from this environment variable if set in preference to reading from /var/run/utmp

FILES

/var/run/utmp

Where the current runlevel will be read from; this file will also be updated with the runlevel record being replaced by a shutdown time record.

/var/log/wtmp

A new runlevel record for the shutdown time will be appended to this file.