reboot

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: March 2007
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NAME

reboot, halt, poweroff - reboot or stop the system

reboot [OPTION]...

halt [OPTION]...

poweroff [OPTION]...

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

When called without the -f option, they simply invoke shutdown(8) with the appropriate arguments.

-f: Does not invoke shutdown(8) and instead performs the actual action you would expect from the name. This is generally used from the event handler itself.
-n: Does not call sync(2) before performing the reboot; this could result in data loss. On Linux, this probably has no effect as the kernel flushes all write buffers before shutting down.
-h: Iterates /proc/ide to find all IDE disk drives and requests that they enter a standby mode before shutting down. On Linux, this is unnecessary as the kernel will do this anyway.
-i: Iterates configured network interfaces and brings them down before shutting down. On Linux, this is unnecessary as the kernel will do this anyway.
-p: Instructs the halt command to instead behave as poweroff.

This tool is provided for compatibility with the traditional System V init(8).

Written by Scott James Remnant.