Restart Ubuntu Gnome session without rebooting

13 Comments to “Restart Ubuntu Gnome session without rebooting”

1. vimal says:

   May 12, 2007 at 5:40 am

   1. How to configure GUI Mode in Ubunto 7.4 & what is the configuration file?

2. Daniel says:

   June 2, 2008 at 4:55 pm

   Thak you.

3. Carlos says:

   June 24, 2009 at 4:07 pm

   Thanx, but in Ubuntu 9 that command shut downs the computer and reboot it.

   Any other command to reboot gnome without rebooting the PC?

4. alfplayer says:

   November 7, 2009 at 9:22 pm

   sudo restart gdm

   this apparently works in karmic

5. Limey says:

   January 7, 2010 at 11:35 pm

   sudo service gdm restart

6. Aaron Curtis says:

   April 30, 2010 at 8:52 pm

   Ctrl+alt+backspace no longer works by default in Ubuntu. Alt+print screen+k does essentially (exactly?) the same thing, though, and works in 9.10 (haven’t tried it in 10.04 yet).

7. Jason says:

   April 30, 2010 at 9:17 pm

   I’ve always just done sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

8. Rodders says:

   June 7, 2010 at 4:41 pm

   Doesn’t work for Lucid (10.04)
   It stops gdm but the restarting does not bring up the graphics screen.

   Must be something new in the gdm, because it works for older versions.
   Also Ctrl-Alt-Backspace has been removed from the list of fast keystrokes, see System>Preferences>Keyboard Shortcuts

9. MagickalHack says:

   December 22, 2010 at 10:51 am

   Alt+Prntscr+K works in 10.04.

10. Adsiwew says:

    May 15, 2011 at 3:27 pm

    This works also:

    killall gnome-panel

    It can be executed from the run dialog (ALT+F2).

11. cheryl says:

    July 24, 2011 at 1:11 am

    Well i have tried every suggestion I can find on the net and i found that every one of them has either corrupted my graphics configuration (terminal commands changed graphics mode and I had to boot in recover mode) or corrupted my file system (alt-printscrn/sysrrq-k lost all my downloads that I thought were already committed to disk).

    I wish they had left ctrl-alt-backspace alone i cannot even figure out how to put it back in now that it is gone from the list of keyboard shortcuts.

    the whole point of having an active keyboard interrupt to kill the window manager directly is what happens if x freezes and you cannot open a terminal window to enter a command? I have this same problem on Solaris and the only way I ever figured out how to get out of frozen x was to rlogin from another terminal in someone else’s office and kill the x server process on my workstation so I can go back and log in again at my desk.

    I only have one computer here at home. What if I am running a job I do not want killed? Now thanks to the prug-n-pray mentality infecting Ubuntu my linux box is just as hobbled as my windows!

    Please put it back!

12. John says:

    November 10, 2011 at 3:20 pm

    The proper way to restart a service is through the command service. (sudo service gdm restart)
    Gdm is now lightdm in ubuntu 11.10.

    http://www.sudo-juice.com/ubuntu-11-10-restart-x-shortcut/

13. ervin davidson says:

    January 26, 2013 at 1:43 am

    it did not work, it says gdm not found