The main reason and operation process of restarting the server with Xshell

Xshell is a powerful SSH terminal tool, which is widely used in remote management of Linux/Windows servers. In daily operation and maintenance, restarting the server with Xshell is not only a common means to solve system anomalies and update configurations, but also a guarantee to ensure server stability and security.

First of all, restarting can clean up memory leaks and zombie processes and restore the integrity of system resources. When the server runs for too long or is not restarted for a long time, kernel modules and user processes may have accumulated memory fragments and unreleased resource handles, resulting in system performance degradation or even crash. After restarting, all processes are reloaded, temporary files and caches are cleared, and memory and file handles are reset, thereby restoring the optimal operating state of the system. Secondly, after installing kernel patches, updating drivers, or changing network configurations, you need to restart the system for the configuration to take effect. Most Linux distributions will install the new kernel to the /boot directory after completing the kernel update with yum or apt, but the new kernel will only be loaded at the next boot; restarting is the only way to apply these underlying updates. After changing the network interface name or IP address, or modifying the firewall policy (such as iptables or firewalld), it is often necessary to reload the network service or restart the host to ensure that the network configuration is correctly implemented.

System restart also plays a key role in maintaining security policies and patching serious vulnerabilities. Some security patches are only loaded at boot time, especially for hardware vulnerabilities (such as Spectre/Meltdown) or BIOS-level updates; if you do not restart, the patch will be installed but will be bypassed or fail to take effect at runtime, leaving potential risks. Regular restart combined with automated scripts can also detect the integrity of service startup to prevent the omission of service startup failures caused by configuration errors. With Xshell's session management and multi-label functions, administrators can connect to multiple servers at the same time and restart them in batches according to predefined operation and maintenance plans. In the face of cloud environments with hundreds or thousands of instances, incorporating the restart operation into Ansible or Shell scripts and executing the scripts in Xshell can greatly reduce manual intervention and ensure that each server is executed according to a unified process.

When using Xshell to restart a server, first confirm that the current session is connected to the target host and has root permissions or corresponding sudo permissions. Enter the whoami and uptime commands to verify the identity of the logged-in user and the system online time, and check the load and current active users. Before restarting, be sure to notify the business team or downstream users, arrange it during the off-peak hours, and execute wall "The server is about to restart, please save all work and exit" in Xshell to send a notice to all logged-in users. After confirming that all key business processes can be suspended or migrated, use the ps -ef command to check whether there are important processes; if some processes need to be stopped first, execute the systemctl stop service name or kill command to terminate them safely.

After confirmation, you can trigger the restart by using the

sudo reboot

or

sudo shutdown -r now

command. The Xshell session window will display the disconnection information, waiting for the server to mount the file system and restart the kernel. In actual operation, in order to avoid false positives due to the long time-consuming file system check (fsck) during the restart, you can add a delay parameter to the command, such as

shutdown -r +1

or

reboot --force --force

to speed up the restart process. However, the forced restart option should be used with caution to avoid data not being written in time. Enable the -h parameter to automatically shut down after reboot, for example shutdown -r 5 "The server will reboot in 5 minutes", giving the administrator a chance to back up logs and check configurations before rebooting.

After the server reboots, Xshell will automatically try to reconnect, or the administrator needs to manually initiate a new SSH connection. After reconnecting, first use uptime and dmesg | tail to check the system boot time and the latest kernel log to ensure that there are no hardware errors or module conflicts. Then use the

systemctl status

or

service --status-all

command to batch check whether key services have been automatically started, focusing on web servers, databases, caches, and monitoring agents. If some services are not started with the system, you need to run systemctl enable service name or chkconfig service name on to set them to start automatically at boot, and start the service manually. After completing the service status verification, you can run netstat -tulpn or ss -tulpn to check the listening port and confirm that the network service interface is normal.

The last step is regression inspection and log analysis. Use journalctl -b or check /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog, and filter the keywords "ERROR", "FAIL" or "OOM" to confirm that there are no serious errors in the startup process. Combined with the session log function of Xshell, the operation and maintenance team can record and archive the entire restart process to provide a basis for subsequent auditing and troubleshooting. After completing the verification, send a "recovery online" announcement, and clear the restart alarm threshold in the monitoring system (such as Prometheus, Zabbix) to resume normal monitoring.

The above steps are to use Xshell to safely and efficiently restart the server to minimize the risk of business interruption and ensure that the update takes effect. The above steps include repeated pre-restart checks, perfect post-restart verification and log auditing, which constitute a complete server restart process. Standardized processes can improve operation and maintenance efficiency and ensure system stability and business continuity.