This small tutorial shows two ways of shutting down or rebooting a Debian 10 server or desktop using the terminal. The same commands will work for Debian 11 too.

Using shutdown command

Open the terminal and execute the following command to shut down the machine,

shutdown --poweroff

Shutdown Debian 10

This will shut down the machine. If you want to cancel, you have to use the -c switch along with the shutdown command.

Similarly, when you have to reboot, execute the below command. If you want to cancel your action, use –reboot option.

shutdown --reboot

Reboot Debian 10

Using systemctl command

An alternative to the shutdown command is to use the systemd systemctl command.

Debian 10 power off using systemctl:

systemctl poweroff

Debian 10 reboot using systemctl:

systemctl reboot
How to Shutdown or Reboot Debian 10

Karim Buzdar

About the Author: Karim Buzdar holds a degree in telecommunication engineering and holds several sysadmin certifications. As an IT engineer and technical author, he writes for various web sites. You can reach Karim on LinkedIn