Reboot, shutdown & recovery
This page covers power actions you can take remotely and the options for recovering a device that is not behaving as expected.
The recovery options here rely on the SPEKTRA Edge OS image layout, so they
do not apply to a device running the droplet agent installed from a .deb
package on your own Linux. See Install the droplet agent.
Reboot and shutdown
You can reboot or shut down a device remotely from the dashboard or with the cuttle command-line tool. These actions are carried over the device’s connection to the platform and require no inbound access to the device.
In the dashboard, open the device’s Device overview page, click the vertical triple dots next to the page title, and choose Reboot or Shutdown.
From the command line:
cuttle devices reboot projects/your-project/regions/us-west2/devices/pi03
cuttle devices shutdown projects/your-project/regions/us-west2/devices/pi03
Both commands warn you and wait for you to type yes, because workloads on the
device — and anything depending on them — go down with it. Pass --force to
skip the prompt in scripts.
A device that loses power or is reset returns to its configured state on next boot, because configuration and data are persistent and the system image is read-only.
A device that is shut down is powered off, and the platform cannot power it back on. Unless someone can reach the hardware, or it is configured to start on its own when power is applied, prefer reboot.
Automatic recovery
The OS is designed to keep itself running unattended:
- It restarts automatically after an unexpected fault rather than waiting at an error.
- Workloads configured to run are brought back up after a reboot.
- If a network configuration change does not produce a working connection, the device can fall back to known-good network settings — see connection fallback.
Recovery options
When a device needs hands-on recovery, the options in increasing order of impact:
| Option | Use when | Effect on data |
|---|---|---|
| Remote reboot | Device is reachable but misbehaving | None |
| Roll back the OS version | A new OS version caused the problem | None |
| Reset the administrator password | Local login is lost | None |
| Recover an encrypted device | Automatic unlock is unavailable | None (with recovery passphrase) |
| Re-image the device | Device is unrecoverable or being repurposed | Erases configuration and data |
See User accounts for password reset and Disk encryption for encrypted-device recovery.
When a device is offline
If a device is offline and unreachable through the platform, work through the troubleshooting playbooks — most often the cause is connectivity, time, or a network configuration change.
Related
- Status indicators — reading what state a device is in.
- OS upgrades — how upgrades roll back if a device fails to boot.
- Disk encryption — recovery on an encrypted device.