Forcing a Reboot (or Shutdown) with Linux

• September 10, 2015
• Linux

If you’ve ever had to reboot (or shutdown) a Linux system but the normal methods (reboot/shutdown/init) were not working (typically due to hanging processes) you can use the sysrq method instead:

To reboot:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger

To shutdown:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger