Ubuntu Server Wake on Lan over Wireless
October 22, 2012 Leave a comment
Recently I cascaded a desktop to my eldest daughter and in turn got her old desktop to use as a server. I strongly dislike noise so I wanted to use this server in the basement of my house. I also wanted to be able to suspend the server when I am not using it. The only hurdle was the fact that I have no Ethernet in my basement. In order to use wireless and still be able to do wake on lan I made use of an Asus Wireless-G Access Point (WL-330GE) in client mode. This allows the server to make use of its Ethernet connection, but the communication will go wireless from the Asus WL-330GE. The Asus is currently old technology and I would suggest using the new ASUS 802.11b/g/n Portable Wireless Router (WL-330N) if you needed to buy a unit now. Both of these devices are traditionally used as travel routers and offer several modes including a wireless bridge.
The program you need to use to send wake on lan signals is ‘etherwake’. To install etherwake do the following command in a terminal window.
sudo apt-get install etherwake
After the etherwake is installed you send Wake on Lan packets with the following command:
waekonlan ##:##:##:##:##:##
Where the you replace the ## with the mac address of the target computer. The target machine must have Wake on Lan enabled in BIOS in order for this to work. For me Etherwake and the ASUS travel router worked perfectly to get the desired outcome.
