Remote Wake-up of the computer (Wake On LAN)

To remotely turn on the computer, you need to have an ATX power supply, a motherboard with Wake On LAN and BIOS enabled, a Wake On LAN network adapter.

When Wake On LAN is supported, the shut down computer powers the AC adapter that is in low power mode and listens to all packets going to its MAC address without answering them. If a Magic Packet comes, the network adapter sends a signal to turn on the power of the computer.

View active network adapters:

ifconfig

You will need the ethtool package, if it is not installed on the system, you must perform the installation:

sudo apt-get install ethtool

Check for WOL support:

sudo ethtool eth0 | grep Wake

The result of the command if the network card is working with WOL and it is enabled:

Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: g

The result of the command when WOL is off:

Wake-on:d

Possible result letters (taken from man ethtool information):

p Wake on PHY activity
u Wake on unicast messages
m Wake on multicast messages
b Wake on broadcast messages
a Wake on ARP
g Wake on MagicPacket™
s Enable SecureOn™ password for MagicPacket™
d Disable (wake on nothing). This option clears all previous options.

To turn on WOL:

sudo ethtool -s интерфейс wol g

Turning on the computer:

apt-get install wakeonlan
wakeonlan -p 50000 00:01:02:03:04:05

-p indicates the UDP port number.

On the Internet, there are also many sites and applications for phones that allow you to send a package to a remote computer.

See also:
Using ethtool

Leave a comment

Leave a Reply