RHEL Linux Red Hat System Administration 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

The correct command to reboot a RHEL system is often understood to be "shutdown -r now." This command performs a safe shutdown of the system and, with the "-r" option, indicates that the system should restart immediately after the shutdown process concludes. This is particularly useful in a production environment, where it's important to ensure that all processes terminate gracefully before the system is rebooted.

While "reboot" is also a valid command to restart the system, it does not provide the same level of feedback regarding the shutdown process. The "shutdown" command is more controlled, allowing administrators to send out notifications to logged-in users and scheduling a shutdown if necessary.

Other options like "restart" are not standard commands in RHEL for rebooting the system. The command "reboot -f" forces a reboot, skipping the clean shutdown process, which could lead to data loss or corruption if there are processes actively running. Therefore, using "shutdown -r now" is often preferred for ensuring a proper shutdown followed by a reboot in a Red Hat environment.