Restart, turn off or remove a Mac
Stop Linux to give your Mac back its memory, start it again, and take a Mac off your account for good. Your files survive a stop; removal is final.
Where the power controls live
Open Your Macs and select the Mac. The buttons sit together under its status: Disconnect public access, Restart server, and either Turn off server or Start server depending on what Linux is doing. Restarting and turning off both need the Mac online, running a current MacServe app. On an older app the panel says which control it cannot offer yet, rather than failing when you press it.
Turning Linux off is not the same as disconnecting public access. Disconnecting leaves Linux running and stops the relay carrying traffic to it. Turning off shuts Linux down, which frees the CPU and memory it was holding back to macOS.
Turn the server off, and start it again
Choose Turn off server and confirm. Your websites, apps and SSH sessions stop until you start it again. Your files, databases and installed software are kept exactly as they were. This is a shutdown, not a delete.
This is the control to use when you want your Mac’s full CPU and memory back for something else. While Linux is off, the Mac itself stays connected to MacServe and keeps reporting in; the panel shows the Mac as online with its server stopped, not as a Mac that has gone missing.
When you want it back, the same button reads Start server. Give it a moment to finish booting, then check that your own applications came back up. Nothing restarts them for you unless you set that up inside Linux.
Restart the Linux server
Restart server reboots Linux without shutting it down first. Apps and SSH sessions are interrupted and your files are preserved. Save your work before confirming.
One power command runs at a time. If a restart, a stop or a start is already queued or running, a second request is refused with a message naming the one in progress rather than quietly replacing it. Queued and Running are not success: wait for the Mac to report that the command finished.
Remove a Mac from your account
Remove this Mac is on the Mac's page in the console, whatever the Mac is doing. If it is still reporting in you are asked to confirm, because removing it stops its websites, SSH and other public connections straight away.
What happens: the Mac disappears from your console along with its public-access settings, and the free MacServe addresses on it are released. Your custom domains are kept and become parked, so you can point them at another Mac afterwards; that is an ordinary domain edit, not a re-verification.
What does not happen: nothing on the Mac itself is touched. Linux, your files and your installed software stay on that disk. Removing a Mac here is an account action, not an uninstall. If you also want the server gone, delete it in the MacServe app on the Mac.
If a command does not finish
A queued command expires if the Mac never accepts it, and the panel says so instead of claiming success. Check that the Mac is awake and online and that the MacServe app is running, then try again.
Do not delete and recreate your Linux server to clear a stuck power command. Nothing about a pending restart or stop damages the VM, and recreating it is the one action that does lose your files.