How to reboot another Mac via Terminal?

Question

Recently my main computer freezes up more often, and instead of giving him the hard treatment by pushing the power button, I'd rather reboot him gently.

So I grab my laptop, fire up Terminal and login to my main computer.

ssh username@ip-address  

I enter my password and that’s how far I come every time. I know that I can kill single processes, but when I try the reboot or restart command, my laptop reboots, not the main computer which I logged into via ssh.

I think it is possible, so this goes out to the advanced terminal user (I'm a beginner).

Answer 1

Once you've logged in via ssh then you need to use shutdown with the -r flag (for restart):

$ ssh username@ip-address
$ sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now

Or, to do it all in one command:

$ ssh username@ip-address sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now