2 Ways To Reboot a Droplet on DigitalOcean

From time to time you may encounter an issue on your DigitalOcean Droplet where it completely crashes for an unexpected reason – such as running out of memory or a corrupted file – your website will go down and your local database will be inaccessible. It’s in these circumstances where you may find yourself needing to reboot a Droplet. In this tutorial, we will review an instance where a Droplet crashed because it ran out of memory.

Just like any standard computer, there are 2 ways to reboot a Droplet on DigitalOcean, these are:

1. Gracefully: Similar to that of restarting your machine through the Restart or Shut Down commands.
2. Forcefully: Likened to holding down the power button on your machine and then powering it back on again.

1. Graceful: Reboot a Droplet through Command Line

A graceful restart through the command line is the preferred method to reboot a Droplet. This will ensure that the Droplet is safely shut down and restarted so that data does not become corrupted. To complete a graceful restart follow the steps below.

Steps:

1. To restart from the command line open up the Droplet and click Console. (Fig. 1)
2. Type in the following Linux command – sudo shutdown -r now (Fig. 2)
3. Wait a few minutes and try opening up the Droplet Console again. If the server is still rebooting, you will not see any notices or commands so check back a little later.

2. Forceful: Reboot a Droplet with Power Cycle

Please note that a forceful reboot of a Droplet through Power Cycle will immediately drop and restart the server. You should only choose the option if you are unable to reboot a Droplet from the command line outlined above as it could corrupt data if you are not careful.

Steps:

1. Visit the Power tab in the Droplet.
2. Click the Power Cycle button in the Power Cycle section
3. Wait for confirmation message and wait a few minutes for the Droplet to reboot.

Reboot a Droplet on DigitalOcean Summary

We hope that this tutorial was helpful, and if you find that your Droplet becomes unresponsive, don’t panic. These situations do arise, and, while not the most ideal situation, rebooting a Droplet only takes a few minutes of time and then you are back in business.