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?

Answer 1

GNOME Shell 3.30.1 on Ubuntu 18.10

The command to replace gnome-shell would be sending a SIGQUIT signal to it with:

killall -3 gnome-shell

or:

killall -SIGQUIT gnome-shell

As of GNOME Shell 3.30.1 on Ubuntu 18.10, the solution below no longer works, and will kick the user to the login screen, losing all of their work.

Before GNOME Shell 3.30.1

The command to replace gnome-shell would be:

gnome-shell --replace &

The ampersand is added to return the shell prompt after running the command; pressing Ctrl+C or closing the terminal instead would make the desktop unusable, and require a full restart.

From the manual page of gnome-shell:

-r, --replace
       Replace the running window manager

Unsure which version you are using?

The command to check your GNOME Shell version is:

gnome-shell --version

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a TTY terminal.

2. Log in with your credentials (username and password) and then run:

   DISPLAY=:0 gnome-shell -r & 
   

3. Log out by running:

   exit 
   

4. Press Alt+F1 to switch back to a graphical X windows session.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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
}

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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