HOWTO: Set your system up for Wake On LAN (WOL)

[BatPenguin]

OK, a quick update: this router really is strange. I just looked at the logs and did all sorts of connections to machines within the LAN from both within and outside (ssh'd into a work computer, used it to launch ftp and ssh's back here to make sure connections come from outside) and the log here really records NOTHING. There's a system log that says the normal DHCP stuff, and a security log that I'd expect to say things about allowed and blocked connections. But nothing gets written into it. Couldn't find anything to change logging options either. So that's pretty much useless.

I also gave using a big port number and forwarding that to the broadcast IP a shot. Didn't work.

More strangeness: the router has 4 LAN ports (and WLAN). Pretty basic. However, I switched some cables around to see what that would do, and noticed that 2 of these 4 ports are actually "outside" of the LAN's firewall and settings. So they get assigned an "outside" IP address, not one of the 192.168... but they get their own from the ADSL line. Haven't seen this before. Anyway, so I of course proceeded to keeping my cable plugged to one of these other ports for a while, wrote down the new IP and shut it down and gave wake-up a try. Worked. So it clearly is an issue with the router not allowing the packet to go through to the local network.

Unfortunately using one of these other LAN ports is not an option for me as they also block me from my local network which I need access to . But this might be a way to devise some sort of a backup plan with another network card that's plugged into another port and only used for wakeups from outside...but I'm not ready to go find a new card just yet for that, I'll keep trying this for a while longer.

Changing the ethtool settings sounds like a good idea. I read the man page and it does sound good to try all those other multicast etc. messages as well. I'll try that next.

To be continued...

[BatPenguin]

I tested the "ethtool -s eth0 wol gumb" method now too.

That won't work, it wakes up too easy. I barely had time to shutdown the machine and it woke up. I tried with "gm" but that was too sensitve too, didn't even have time to get to the laptop before it was up again. So I guess my network has enough things flying around that I do need to get the magic packet to work, waking up to any network activity will just make it boot too often.

Another network card attached to one of those other LAN ports would of course do the trick. I guess that's what I'll have to do.

[Big_Croc7]

Hmm, how strange! At least you've managed to narrow it down. It sounds like you might have what's called a DMZ enabled on the router, though I'm not sure. If it remembers IP addresses after powering down then maybe ethtool gu (for unicast packets only) might work without waking it up too often, but I'm at the limit of my experience with it now I'm afraid. Let us know if you solve it without a second network card

[foureight84]

another very easy method (for dd-wrt users) is to turn on WOL settings in your BIOS and add the MAC of the computer you want to invoke WOL to the DD-WRT Services panel. Invoking WOL is now as easy as logging into your DD-WRT panel and hitting the right button.

[BatPenguin]

Sounds good, I'll give "ethtool gu" a try still when I get the chance. Might be a few days until I have time to play with this thing next, I'm posting this from work and getting mighty busy with holiday stuff at home.

DMZs I wasn't even thinking about, but actually that might be another way of doing it without another card. Perhaps if I get a DMZ setup that exposes that computer completely it might start receiving the packets fine regardless of whether the router believes them worth relaying or not. I'm not even sure if the router will allow that (a truly exposed internal machine), but I'll look into it. I'm running firestarter to setup firewall rules and denyhosts to slam the door on dictionary attacks to ssh, so should be safe enough, maybe change ssh port to be sure. Anyway, I'll try that one too - thanks again for the tips. I love these forums

And oh, foureight84, if I had a DD-WRT capable router I'd be a very happy camper, I'm sure - those things look really nice. I guess part of this whole problem is being too stubborn to give up: I know there's plenty of routers that would let me use wol fine but I'm not about to admit defeat and buy one without a fight, heh. Although I've been keeping an eye out for used Linksys routers that would support DD-WRT, but it looks like whoever has one of those old gems in their possession is not about to give them up easily.

[elsaturnino]

I have a Dimension 9100 and there doesn't seem to be any WOL settings in the BIOS. However, when I do "sudo ethtool eth0" I get the following:

Settings for eth0:
        Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Speed: 100Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: MII
        PHYAD: 1
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: on
        Supports Wake-on: g
        Wake-on: g
        Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
        Link detected: yes

This seems to me to imply that WOL should work. However, it does not. I'm not sure how ethtool works so is it possible that the driver I have supports WOL but the NIC doesn't?

[njparton]

It supports wake on lan "g" so you can do:

ethtool -s eth0 wol g

you can't however use the other options such as multicast (u) or broadcast (b) wake up. However as seen in the posts above, that would mean your pc waking up every time your router pinged it anyway.

[juanto]

Hi all,

I wrote some time ago... about a problem with wakeonlan (you can find it in this threat).

The wakeonlan that I sent it was to a machine placed in another subnet, my machine is 10.161.14.134 and the another machine is 10.161.16.230.

If pass the enough time, the ip 10.161.16.230 is deleted in the routing tables of the router, in this case, the magic packet is not sent in broadcast in that subnet.

If I send the magic packet from a machine, ex: 10.161.16.229, the 16.230 wake up without problems.

Regards,

Juanto.

[bmccorm2]

Hi all,

I wrote some time ago... about a problem with wakeonlan (you can find it in this threat).

Juanto-

I seem to be having the same problem as you. My WOL works fine if i try to do it within an hour (or so) of shutting down the computer. However, if I wait for a longer time, it mysteriously stops working. However, I think all of my computers are on the same subnet (192.168.1.xxx). Could please elaborate on what you did to make WOL work all the time?

Thanks,
Bryan

[garolou]

Bryan -

I also have the same problem. Have been at it for 2 days and haven't come close to a solution.

What I learnt is that the system should shut down to a G2 (s5) state (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface to learn about ACPI) however seems to do so for a short amount of time, maybe for about half hour or so. Then totally shuts down.

I have a onboard Realtek RTL8101E 10/100.
I get the following results:

$ acpitool -w

   Device       S-state   Status   Sysfs node
  ---------------------------------------
  1. P0P2         S4     disabled  
  2. P0P1         S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1e.0
  3. PS2K         S4     disabled  pnp:00:0d
  4. UAR1         S4     disabled  pnp:00:0e
  5. EUSB         S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.7
  6. MC97         S4     disabled  
  7. HDAC         S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1b.0
  8. P0P4         S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1c.0
  9. P0P5         S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1c.1
  10. P0P6        S4     disabled  
  11. P0P7        S4     disabled  
  12. P0P8        S4     disabled  
  13. P0P9        S4     disabled  
  14. USB0        S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.0
  15. USB1        S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.1
  16. USB2        S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.2
  17. USB3        S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.3

$ ethtool eth0

Settings for eth0:
        Supported ports: [ TP ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
                                1000baseT/Full 
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Speed: 100Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: Twisted Pair
        PHYAD: 0
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: on
        Supports Wake-on: pumbg
        Wake-on: g
        Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)
        Link detected: yes

Now I figure it is either hardware related or there is someway to configure the shutdown process to do what we want.

I haven't found any info yet on how that possibly could be done. Maybe it requires patching the kernel but that is beyond my "relatively recent move to Linux" capabilities. I'm still looking.

Dave