Power#

The Power panel is the third panel on the System page's Overview row. It does two things — reboot and power off — and both of them act at once.

Its own first line is the warning that matters:

Unsaved config is lost on reboot; save to the boot config first. Both actions are recorded in the audit log with who asked.

How it works#

Two buttons, Reboot… and Power off…, both disabled below the admin role with the tooltip Admin role required. Pressing either does not act: it arms the panel, which replaces the buttons with a field.

Type the host name (edge) to reboot

The confirming button stays disabled until the typed text matches the router's host name exactly. Cancel returns to the two buttons.

This is the same standard the product applies to every irreversible action that has no undo: typing the name of the thing you are about to affect. A restore is the other one in this section, and removing a licence is the third.

When it goes through, the panel reports the router's own acknowledgement and what happens next:

Rebooting: <the router's output>. This page will lose its connection.

What the agent sends#

POST /api/system/power with {"action":"reboot"} or {"action":"poweroff"}. Anything else is refused with 400: "action must be reboot or poweroff".

The agent calls the router's own reboot or power-off endpoint. now is the only path the router accepts, so there is no scheduled reboot and no delay — agent/vyos.go. Both calls use the long-running client tier, because a router in the middle of shutting down is not quick to answer.

The route is adminOnly. The audit entry is power-reboot or power-poweroff with the actor, the role and the source address, and it is written whether the call succeeded or failed — including the router's own error when it did — agent/parity.go, handlePower.

bash

curl -sk -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $T" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"action":"reboot"}' \
  https://<router>:8443/api/system/power

Before you press it#

Two more, both obvious in hindsight and both worth the sentence:

Power off means someone has to press a button. There is no wake-on-LAN, no IPMI integration and no remote power control in the product. On a headless box in another building, Power off is the end of your access.
Commit-confirm's rollback is a reboot. If a commit-confirm window is running and you reboot before confirming, the router comes back on the previous configuration — which is the mechanism working as designed, and a surprise if you have forgotten the timer is armed.

The other reboot#

An image upgrade needs a reboot to take effect, and this panel is where it happens. The order is: install the image, check that the new one shows as default and the old one still shows as running, save the configuration, then reboot from here.

What this panel will not do#

No scheduled reboot. now is the only option the router's endpoint takes.
No power on. Nothing in the product can start a router that is off.
No reset to factory defaults. There is no command and no UI action that wipes accounts and returns the box to a shipped configuration. Starting over means reinstalling from the image.
No agent restart. Restarting wheelhouse-agent without rebooting the router is a systemctl command at the console.