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I've always heard and used the term "reboot" or "restart" to indicate restarting a server, service or software module.

  • "reboot the server"
  • "restart Tomcat"
  • "restart the XYZ service"

Does "bounce" mean something different or is it just a duplicate term for restart? How is "bounce" any different than restart or reboot?

masegaloeh
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Wavy Crab
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    Bounce is a euphemism for a "warm" or "soft" restart as opposed to a "cold" or "hard" restart. It is done without cutting the electricity to the system. Long running processes like web servers are often bounced daily to prevent accumulated memory leaks and other resource management issues. – Dominic Cerisano Mar 30 '19 at 19:02

12 Answers12

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I use "bounce" all the time in the context of cycling something-- "Bouncing a service", "Bouncing a server", "Bouncing a router", etc. I'd use it interchangeably with "restart", "reboot", or "power cycle".

It seems to be slightly regional, being most popular in the Midwest, Northeast, and West coast. The term seems to have originated in the IBM, VAX, and Unix communities; as according to the Jargon File. It seems rare for people to use the term outside of these regions.

I wouldn't say it's in extremely common use, but it's out there.

Chris S
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Evan Anderson
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  • I've heard it used a pile in .ie, so it's obviously not purely a midwestern US thing. – Cian Sep 04 '09 at 08:18
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    I've heard it around the world - west coast, midwest, east coast USA; Singapore; London; Hong Kong ... it's pretty much global in my experience – warren Sep 04 '09 at 11:14
  • I think it's a regional thing. Everyone in IT in the Midwest US knows the term; they might not use it, but they know what it means. Outside of the Midwest it's hit and miss; except for Europe, where they'll have no idea what you're talking about. – Chris S Apr 23 '10 at 19:13
  • Can confirm it's used in .ie and .au – Antitribu Apr 23 '10 at 19:21
  • I'm in South Africa, it's used here quite a lot. First time my wife heard me say something like "did you bounce the box?" on the phone she burst out in fits of laughter. – ThatGraemeGuy Apr 23 '10 at 19:26
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    I tend to use "kick", as in kick that server or kick that misbehaving tomcat process. ;) – Tom O'Connor Apr 23 '10 at 19:37
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I've heard of bounce: use it every day, when I'm working on Windows machines. :)

Anyone else use the terms "nuke" or "blow it away" when talking about format/reinstall? Some of my clients give me a crooked look when I say I'm going to "blow away their machine" and re-build it.

gravyface
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In my part of the world the term "bounce" is generally used when talking about services, whereas you "reboot" a server or "restart" an application or process.

The explanation I was originally given for the terminology is that a service is stopped and restarted pretty quickly. i.e. Throw it down and let it come back up, like bouncing a ball. A server reboot (an historical term) takes a significantly longer time (normally), so can't really be called a bounce. Applications don't get bounced or rebooted, so they are restarted.

John Gardeniers
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I've heard it quite a few times referring to rebooting a device or cycling a service. As in: the device/service goes down and comes back up.

joeqwerty
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I think UNIX admins used to commonly say bounce instead of reboot, way back in the day. That's the origin I think.

0

I am from the East Coast and have not heard this terminology "bounce" a server in my 10 years of IT career. However, I just learned this word from a fellow IT Admin after working in the Silicon Valley and it has been used quite often. I guess it is a regional IT slang and it means to restart.

chaoman
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I am from the UK and work for Europe’s largest IT Company. Bouncing something in the UK is commonly used in Infrastructure Server terms and not so much in the Networking space.

So Windows / UNIX / Mainframe / Storage / Messaging / Database / Web technology professionals will talk about bouncing:

  • Servers (graceful restart or hard restart / power cycle)
  • Services
  • Devices (graceful restart or hard restart / power cycle)

Our Network and Voice teams seem to talk more in terms of restarts and reloads.

Clouds
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Personally I've never heard the term "bounce" in regards to IT, except for a bounced email, and in that case, bouncing means returning it to its originator.

I guess maybe in this scenario to "bounce" doesn't mean to just reset the power, but reset the configuration maybe?

Must be one of those carazay Americanisms ;)

Mark Henderson
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  • Same here, until I moved to Canada. I was the one in meetings, mouth agape, wondering what on earth everyone was on about when they referring to *bounce this*, and *bounce that*. – Izzy Sep 04 '09 at 04:50
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I've only heard it used once or twice before, and in context they were asking to reboot the server. I'm guessing in some circles it seems appropriate because the server is going down and back up - like a ball bouncing.

AnonJr
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It may be a regionalism. We use it all the time, particularly in regards to a service we expect to come back up quickly with little or no down time. So you bounce Apache with a downtime of ~1 sec. but you reboot a server that could take 15-20 minutes to come back up.

Catherine MacInnes
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  • You can also bounce apache with 'apachectl graceful', which won't result in downtime, and isn't calling the 'restart' argument. – Joe H. Sep 04 '09 at 13:09
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I think bounce is a regional term. I work with DBA of a few select customers in the midwest. We typically use the term bounce for bringing a database down and back up. Sometimes the term bounce slides over to restarting the server, but it's much more rare than when talking about the database.

roknir
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I've never seen anybody imply anything different with 'bounce' than 'restart' - other than that it just sounds a lot more fun.

Word choice is one of the ways I try to keep things interesting. Half of my users don't have the first idea of what 'reformat', 'reimage', or 'ghost' mean - but if I tell them I'm going to lobotomize their PC, or give it a brain transplant, with a clean new brain... they can at least grasp the concept. And it's funny. (somehow this seems incredibly relevant on a Friday)

Kara Marfia
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