Wake On Lan / Wake On PME / Wake on Ring
On way is to turn on a computer remotely is through a network. This can be accomplished many ways but is commonly referred to as wake on lan, wake on pme, or wake on ring. This is actually a fairly complex process due to the number of variables involved, including, but not limited to, the following:
- physical network: the nics, wires, switches, hubs, and any physical items which comprise the network
- target computer to be turned on
- operating system the target computer is running, maybe a high quality system like linux, freebsd, or mac os x, or even other insecure and low quality operating systems (my biased opinion based upon years of computing experience)
- the driver used to operate the network card from the operating system
- the bios of the target computer
- the motherboard of the target computer
Complicated? Yes. Doable? Yes.
- First things first, check your bios. That should have something about wake on lan or wake on pme. See little valley d201gly bios pictures for an example
- Operating System Specific Instructions
- Linux - Use ethtool from the command line to activate wol
- FreeBSD - more complicated, check http://stsp.name/wol/ for support
- Mac OS X - should be easy, figure it out.
- Controlling computer - tools to "push the button" are available everywhere, for all operating systems. Seek and ye shall find!
Courtesy of Gentoo:
#!/bin/sh
if [ "`cat /proc/acpi/wakeup | grep 'ILAN' | awk '{ print $3; }'`" == "enabled" ]
then
exit
else
echo ILAN > /proc/acpi/wakeup
fi