Shut down or restart Ubuntu from the terminal

I'm on a headless server over ssh and need to reboot it. What's the right command, and is there a difference between shutdown -r and reboot?

restart linux terminal

1 Answer

meera_helpdesk Nov 04, 2026

sudo shutdown now to power off, sudo reboot to restart. shutdown +10 schedules it in ten minutes and shutdown -c cancels that.