How to restart GNOME Shell from command line?

Question

I would like to implement a keyboard shortcut to restart gnome-shell whenever this one crashes (some bugs aren't currently fixed just yet). For this I would need a command line to restart the shell.

The Alt+F2 and restart command won't work when the shell is crashed because the prompt is implemented in the shell.

Hence, how to restart the gnome-shell from command line?

NOTE: Alt+F2 and restart will stop all the running programs. (I still don't know how to restart the GUI without stopping the programs.) — Andriy Makukha, Aug 17 '18 at 06:38

score 125 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 28 '13 at 11:41

125

The easiest way is to Alt+F2 and type r then ↵.

answered Oct 28 '13 at 11:41

agustibr

1,675

11

That is true, but exactly not the question. The question then is: what happens when you do this. So that you can do it yourself – sehe Jan 21 '17 at 11:34
9

As of GNOME Shell 3.30.1 on Ubuntu 18.10, and commandline: "killall -3 gnome-shell" are the only solutions posted here that work. All others kick the user out to login screen, losing all their work. – C.Rogers Nov 15 '18 at 10:49
9

Tried this on debian buster. Getting "Restart is not available on wayland" error. – livinston Aug 14 '19 at 21:49
3

Amazing! That was so simple on Ubuntu 19.10 :) Thank you! – yanike Jan 23 '20 at 01:40
1

This one works for me on Xorg display server. But on Wayland, for now, no way to make it work. – fsevenm Mar 21 '20 at 08:09
I get "Command 'r' not found". Anyone know what's up with that? – bRost03 Mar 31 '20 at 16:51
Seems to have worked on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Thanks! – MadPhysicist Apr 07 '21 at 12:41
sometimes lg stucked – yurenchen Apr 25 '23 at 15:52

score 53 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 08:43

53

Since GNOME Shell 3.30.1: You can also do a killall -3 gnome-shell.

edited Jun 10 '20 at 08:43

Pablo Bianchi

17,552

answered Aug 19 '16 at 20:11

Denis

539

1

Probably because this is a good solution where the other command doesn't work. I tried both, the choosen one is good but didn't solve my problem, while this did. – Mitro Nov 05 '18 at 10:00
4

As of Ubuntu 18.10, GNOME Shell 3.30.1 - THIS IS THE CORRECT SOLUTION. All other solutions restart the session and kick the user out to the login screen, losing all their work. – C.Rogers Nov 15 '18 at 10:44
3

SIGQUIT (3) doesn't kill the process – Jack Wasey Jan 01 '19 at 11:22
1

This seemed to work for me. Whereas I was using gnome-shell --replace & before. It worked but, kept running in the terminal. The issue I was having was with Youtube videos in full screen somehow causing Dash-to-Dock and the panel to freeze closed. https://github.com/micheleg/dash-to-dock/issues/298#issuecomment-473622040 – Natetronn Apr 18 '19 at 23:48
Matter of style: a Unix sysadmin might prefer pkill -3 gnome-shell rather than killall, which means something different outside of the GNU OS. – Rich Aug 08 '19 at 18:57
On some systems, applications will be child processes of gnome-shell, so when you restart it with this method you will STILL lose your work. – Jelle De Loecker Nov 03 '19 at 18:38
@smac89 you should remove your comment. It only serves to confuse users. – admirabilis Jan 20 '21 at 12:23
@TeresaeJunior done – smac89 Jan 20 '21 at 19:12
You need this if Gnome Shell and desktop is freezing and cursor is the only thing that's moving. Just press Ctrl + Alt + F2 then type the above command. It was successful in 18.04. – fsevenm Jan 27 '21 at 16:54
Thank goodness for this when my xrdp session had some weird stuck Meta key issue (which I couldn't disable using the sticky keys or accessibility settings) – Sridhar Sarnobat Jan 12 '23 at 08:03
Doesn't work on Ubuntu 24.04/Gnome 46 any more. It shows a screen: "Oops, something went wrong" with a button "Log out" – bmaupin Nov 15 '24 at 22:07

score 16 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 12 '23 at 06:57

16

In the case where the whole GNOME Shell got frozen, there is a way to restart it from the terminal without restarting the whole X window:

Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a TTY terminal.
Log in with your credentials (username and password) and then run:
```
DISPLAY=:0 gnome-shell -r & 
```
Log out by running:
```
exit 
```
Press Alt+F1 to switch back to a graphical X windows session.

edited Oct 12 '23 at 06:57

BeastOfCaerbannog

16,936

answered Jun 18 '18 at 11:29

ino

261

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 17 '21 at 09:48

7

The Gnome 40 the equivalent of Alt+F2 restart is:

busctl --user call org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/Shell org.gnome.Shell Eval s 'Meta.restart("Restarting…")'

Got this tip myself from https://www.linuxuprising.com/2020/07/how-to-restart-gnome-shell-from-command.html.

answered Sep 17 '21 at 09:48

mipmip

190

worked on Debian 11.0 – rofrol Oct 05 '21 at 19:46
I wanted to note that this took a few seconds (screen turned black) and then all my apps were closed on 21.10. – LiveWireBT Nov 26 '21 at 03:28
This doesn't work for me anymore in GNOME Shell 42.5 – curusarn Oct 26 '22 at 19:03
For Gnome Shell 43 (on Xorg), the command is now: busctl --user call org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/Shell org.gnome.Shell Eval s 'Meta.restart("Restarting…", global.context)'.
However, executing GJS like this is unfortunately no longer supported by default. You have to run global.context.unsafe_mode = true in Looking Glass first, which makes this rather unhelpful for frequent restarts
– ZimbiX Jan 18 '23 at 08:24

score 6 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 08:41

6

Before GNOME Shell 3.30.1 the command should just be gnome-shell --replace.

edited Jun 10 '20 at 08:41

Pablo Bianchi

17,552

answered Jan 31 '12 at 15:26

Knowledge Cube

14,961

5

As of GNOME Shell 3.30.1 on Ubuntu 18.10, this solution no longer works, and will kick the user to the login screen, losing all their work. The correct solution is now commandline: "killall -3 gnome-shell", or ALT+f2 and r (if possible). – C.Rogers Nov 15 '18 at 10:50
doesn't work for a remote session, so when gnome shell has frozen, this doesn't work. – Jack Wasey Jan 01 '19 at 11:21

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 13 '22 at 11:43

2

Sending TERM signal to Gnome Shell 42.1 works for me on Ubuntu 22.04:

pkill -TERM gnome-shell

Note: TERM is the default signal for pkill.

answered Jun 13 '22 at 11:43

Patrick Decat

614

Doesn't work on Ubuntu 24.04/Gnome 46 any more. It shows a screen: "Oops, something went wrong" with a button "Log out" – bmaupin Nov 15 '24 at 22:07

Cristian Florescu · Answer 7 · 2021-10-08T06:43:27.010

1

In order to proper restart all related, I prefer restarts of whole stack (if tty1..4 works)

sudo killall -9 gdm
sudo killall -9 gdm3
sudo killall -9 lightdm

edited Oct 08 '21 at 06:43

answered Oct 08 '21 at 06:38

Cristian Florescu

336

sehe · Answer 8 · 2017-01-21T12:30:14.437

I came up with this function to logout users (see at the bottom)

It assumes

you have sudo permissions
you have bash
the users have 1 running X session (although you should be able to issue the same logout command multiple times to get rid of remaining sessions)

You can give it multiple usernames:

logout john jane mike elisa

And you can give it additional options:

logout john --force

So, I have the following helper function:

function forcelogout() {
    logout "$@" --no-prompt --force
}

Notes:

This is a blunt instruments and works by just copying the entire session environment. This could be more selective.
Sometimes logout seems to take a while
In rare occasions the session keeps being reported until someone visits the vt where the session ran, but nothing is there anymore)

CODE

function logout() {
    local USERNAME
    export USERNAMES=( ) 
    while [ -n "$1" ]; do case "$1" in
        -* ) break ;;
        *) USERNAMES+=( "$1" ); shift ;;
    esac; done

    for USERNAME in "${USERNAMES[@]}"; do
        local SESSION_PID=$(pgrep -fu "$USERNAME" gnome-session|head -1)
        if [ -n "$SESSION_PID" ]; then
            (
                sudo -u "$USERNAME" cat "/proc/$SESSION_PID/environ" | xargs -0 -n 1 echo export
                echo "gnome-session-quit --logout $@"
            ) | sudo -u "$USERNAME" sh -;
        fi
    done
}

logout USERNAME --force, gives me an output telling me a number is necessary. — Quidam, Jun 04 '20 at 05:11
@Quidam That indicates that the variable is not set to a value. You need to set it (which is what happens in the script) — sehe, Jun 04 '20 at 09:39

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 04 '17 at 14:40

I defined an alias: alias gnomeshellrestart='echo "gnome-shell --replace -d" $(w| grep "$USER"| awk "{print \$3}"|grep ":"|head -1)| at now'

You may be able to start a terminal by right-clicking with the mouse on background and type there (alt-tab is dysfct then, too), if not, login to a tty with e.g. ctrl-alt-F2 and run from there.

How to restart GNOME Shell from command line?

9 Answers9

CODE