Wake On Lan

[ugmoe]

Hello All,
I've got an old Legacy DL580. It's currently configured with Ubuntu Server 8.04. I'd like to configure/enable the Wake On Lan service to wake this machine remotely. Are there any walk-through's out there?

[Matti_Kurkela]

Which generation of a DL580? The full model designation would be something like DL 580 Gn, where n is a generation number. If there is no generation number anywhere in the server's front panel, it's the G1 version of a DL580.

Wake-On-LAN is not quite a service; it's more accurately a hardware feature. If the system has the "hpasm" driver package installed, the "hpasmcli" command should allow you to enable/disable WOL while the OS is running.

If the hpasm drivers are not installed (as Ubuntu 8.04 might not be supported by HP), you must access the BIOS setup menus while the system is booting. Usually the setup is accessible by pressing the F9 key at the correct time... normally the BIOS boot messages give instructions about how to access the menus.

After the BIOS WOL setting has been enabled, the system will supply power to the NIC even when shut down.

The next step should be to enable the WOL function in the Linux NIC driver, so that the driver leaves the NIC into WOL-enabled state when the system is shut down. This can usually be done by the "ethtool" command, although some older (mainly 3com) NIC driver modules may require a module option to enable WOL.

For example, to enable WOL on eth0:

ethtool -s eth0 wol g

And to disable:

ethtool -s eth0 wol d

The WOL enabling command must usually be run each time the system is started up, so it must be incorporated in the system startup procedures. You can do this any way you wish, but the easiest might be to use the "up" directive in the /etc/network/interfaces file.

MK