Question

Power Cycle

Posted June 6, 2013 18.9k views
When I click on the name of my droplet, it displays several different icons, such as Power, Access, Resize, Snapshots, Backups etc. Under the Power tab, which is open by default, there is another tab Power Cycle, which, as shown below, says "This will reboot your droplet" and then it provides more info about how they recommend that it be done through the command line. Questions 1. Is this something I'm supposed to do at the beginning after creating a droplet? or is it something do during management of the server (for whatever reason if need arises) 2. Since it's recommended to do it through the command line, how do I do that? I'm using 'Ubuntu 12.10 x32 Server' ----- Power CyclePower Off This will reboot your droplet. We recommend rebooting your droplet through the command line, as this action is the same as hard resetting the server and may cause data corruption. Do you wish to proceed?
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11 answers
nightflash June 6, 2013
1. Power Cycle performs a hard shut down of the server, turning it off abruptly, and then starts it up again. Power Off turns the server off abruptly (in contrast to the slower Shutdown option).
2. via Telnet/SSH: "sudo reboot".

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/the-digitalocean-control-panel
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randyhaupt June 8, 2013
"Power Cycle" is also known as "hard reset", "hard reboot" or "cold reboot" and normally means interrupting the power supply for some seconds. This is an emergency option which should only be used if the server doesn't react to anything.
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simon.waddington September 19, 2013
Same question - I don't want to reboot I want to shutdown. I used 'shutdown now' from the commandline which is what I've always used and I get logged out from the shell but the console says the machine goes to single user maintenance mode (or waiting to enter it) and remains active. Is that something peculiar about your standard Ubuntu 13.04 (64-bit) image? Every other machine I've used, virtual or not, really shuts down after 'shutdown'..

The same behavior applies to 'halt' (except there is no "maintenance mode" prompt).

I guess I could take it to single user and then trigger power off from the console but shouldn't I be able to do it *just* from the command line?

Or is there actually really no difference between "Power off" state and a machine that is active but halted?
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kamaln7 September 19, 2013
@simon.waddington: I haven't seen that happening before -- are you able to reproduce it on a fresh new Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit droplet?
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admin267488 October 4, 2013
I'm having the same problem as LazyTiger. I have to Power Off my droplet in order for DO control panel to recognize it as Off. I created a support ticket.
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admin267488 October 4, 2013
Sorry, I meant I have the same problem as simon.waddington.
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admin267488 October 4, 2013
Thanks to DO support, I found out that to power off the droplet from the command line I can use the "poweroff" command (also "shutdown -h now" works). The "halt" command will not actually power off the droplet.
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cjrajeev October 30, 2013
Dear Sir,
"We recommend rebooting your droplet through the command line, as this action is the same as hard resetting the server and may cause data corruption......."

I am a new user. I created droplet with Ubuntu, and installed zPanel, my website started working now/ I want resize my server to next level. I saw one option to resize using snapshot method. But I don't want to lose my IP (even in accidently), so i want to power off the droplet and resize it in a safeway. I read in CP saw above quoted recommendation. But I couldn't see any concrete instruction for how to re-boot from command line, How to Power off etc. I can see some API Commands in Control Panel but struggling to know how to use it.

Please Help...
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kamaln7 October 30, 2013
@cjrajeev: You can reboot a droplet by running the sudo reboot command as root.

If you want to power it off, you have to run sudo shutdown -h now or sudo poweroff.
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marcelo August 6, 2014

Hello!

After I power off my droplet, how can I turn it on again?

Tks

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kasia June 29, 2016

I have a perhaps related problem. I used a third-party Android app to ‘power cycle’ a droplet that had a SQL crash on one of the websites. It seemed to work fine. That was last week. All the sites are showing fine, but today I checked and the droplet says it is OFF! How is this possible?

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