Restart a Device Remotely

Restart a managed device from octoja by running the OS restart command in a remote terminal — or restart a single service without a full reboot.

Written By Stefan Steuer

Last updated 8 days ago

You can restart a managed device without leaving octoja. When the device is online, open a remote terminal session in your browser and run the operating system's restart command — no separate remote-access tool, VPN, or console access required. If a full reboot is more than you need, you can also restart a single service or end a process from the device's live tabs.

Prerequisites

  • The device must be online (agent connected).
  • Your user account must belong to a group that grants the Terminal device action for the target device. Set this under Administration → Groups: open the group, go to its Device Access tab, and enable Terminal under Allowed actions. Each remote capability is its own permission — see Remote Operations.

Restart the whole device

  1. Go to Devices and click the device you want to restart.
  2. Open a terminal session on the device. For the full walkthrough, see Open a Terminal on a Device.
  3. In the terminal, run the restart command for the device's operating system:
Operating systemRestart command
Windows (PowerShell or cmd)shutdown /r /t 0
Linuxsudo reboot (or sudo shutdown -r now)
macOSsudo reboot (or sudo shutdown -r now)

The device goes offline while it reboots. The agent reconnects on its own once the device is back online — you do not need to re-enroll it or take any further action. Any interactive sessions you had open (terminal, remote desktop, file browser) end when the device restarts.

Restart a single service instead

If you only need to recover one service — a stuck print spooler or a backup agent, for example — you do not have to reboot the whole device. If the device runs Windows, open the Services tab on the device detail page, find the service, and restart it directly. Running processes can be stopped from the Processes tab with the Kill process action. These actions take effect immediately and do not restart the device. See Monitor Device Performance Live.

Tips

  • Restarting a device needs administrator rights on Windows or root on Linux and macOS. The terminal session runs with the privileges of the agent on the device.
  • Warn anyone working on the device first — a remote restart signs out the logged-in user just like a local one.
  • On Windows you can add a grace period: shutdown /r /t 60 restarts after 60 seconds, and shutdown /a cancels a restart that has not happened yet.
  • The device shows as offline in octoja for as long as the reboot takes, then returns to online by itself.