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REBOOT(8) System Manager's Manual REBOOT(8) NAME reboot, halt, fastboot, fasthalt -- stopping and restarting the system SYNOPSIS halt [-DflNnpq] [-e variable=value] [-k kernel] [-o options] reboot [-cDdflNnpqr] [-e variable=value] [-k kernel] [-o options] fasthalt [-DflNnpq] [-e variable=value] [-k kernel] [-o options] fastboot [-dDflNnpq] [-e variable=value] [-k kernel] [-o options] DESCRIPTION The halt and reboot utilities flush the file system cache to disk, send all running processes a SIGTERM (and subsequently a SIGKILL) and, re- spectively, halt or restart the system. The action is logged, includ- ing entering a shutdown record into the user accounting database. The options are as follows: -c The system will turn off the power and then turn it back on if it can. If the power down action fails, the system will halt or reboot normally, depending on whether halt or reboot was called. At the present time, only the ipmi(4) driver imple- ments the power cycle functionality and only on hardware with a BMC that supports power cycling. Unlike power off, the amount of hardware that supports power cycling is small. -D Delete existing nextboot configuration and exit. -d The system is requested to create a crash dump. This option is supported only when rebooting, and it has no effect unless a dump device has previously been specified with dumpon(8). -e variable=value Sets variable to value in the loader's and kernel's environ- ment. If value is not already enclosed in double quotes, they will be added before writing to the nextboot configuration. Care should be taken if value contains any characters that are special to the shell or loader's configuration parsing code. -f Force reboot. Normally, reboot checks for the presence of the next kernel, and absence of the /var/run/noshutdown file. Without this flag, reboot is denied if one of the conditions failed. -k kname Boot the specified kernel kname on the next system boot. This is a one-shot option, the default kernel will be booted on suc- cessive boots. No reboot or halt will be performed if /boot/kname/kernel does not exist unless the -f flag is speci- fied. -l The halt or reboot is not logged to the system log. This op- tion is intended for applications such as shutdown(8), that call reboot or halt and log this themselves. -N The file system cache is not flushed during the initial process clean-up, however the kernel level reboot(2) is still processed with a sync. This option can be useful for performing a "best-effort" reboot when devices might be unavailable. This can happen when devices have been disconnected, such as with iscsi(4). -n The file system cache is not flushed. This option should prob- ably not be used. -o options This option allows the passing of kernel flags for the next boot. -p The system will turn off the power if it can. If the power down action fails, the system will halt or reboot normally, de- pending on whether halt or reboot was called. -q The system is halted or restarted quickly and ungracefully, and only the flushing of the file system cache is performed (if the -n option is not specified). This option should probably not be used. -r The system kills all processes, unmounts all filesystems, mounts the new root filesystem, and begins the usual startup sequence. After changing vfs.root.mountfrom with kenv(1), reboot -r can be used to change the root filesystem while pre- serving kernel state. This requires the tmpfs(4) kernel module to be loaded because init(8) needs a place to store itself af- ter the old root is unmounted, but before the new root is in place. The fasthalt and fastboot utilities are nothing more than aliases for the halt and reboot utilities. Normally, the shutdown(8) utility is used when the system needs to be halted or restarted, giving users advance warning of their impending doom and cleanly terminating specific programs. EXAMPLES Replace current root filesystem with UFS mounted from /dev/ada0s1a: kenv vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/ada0s1a reboot -r This mechanism can also be used with NFS, with a caveat that it only works with NFSv4, and requires a numeric IPv4 address: kenv vfs.root.mountfrom=nfs:192.168.1.1:/share/name reboot -r SEE ALSO kenv(1), reboot(2), getutxent(3), ipmi(4), boot(8), dumpon(8), nextboot(8), savecore(8), shutdown(8), sync(8) HISTORY A reboot utility appeared in 4.0BSD. FreeBSD 15.0 April 12, 2025 REBOOT(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY
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