This page explains how to enable use Wake-on-LAN in systems which have Ubuntu installed.

In order to use WoL to power on a system which has Ubuntu installed, WoL should be enabled both in the BIOS and in the NIC.

To enable WoL in the BIOS, enter the BIOS setup and look for something called "Wake up on PCI event", "Wake up on LAN" or similar.

WoL in the NIC

Determining whether the NIC supports WoL

First, determine which NIC will be used, and then check whether it supports the MagicPacket(tm) using

sudo ethtool <NIC>

and look for

Supports Wake-on: <letters>

If one of the letters is g, that means that the NIC should support the WoL MagicPacket(tm) method (for the other letters look at man ethtool).

Enabling WoL in the NIC

To check whether WoL is enabled in the NIC, one could use

sudo ethtool <NIC>

and look for

Wake-on: <letters>

If one of the letters is g and not d, then one should be able to power on the system (after it has been powered off) using the WoL MagicPacket(tm).

If the letter is d, however, one must issue something like

sudo ethtool -s <NIC> wol g

On most systems, issuing this command would be required after each boot. If the system's networking is configured via ifupdown, then it would be easy to add the line up ethtool -s <NIC> wol g below the interface's configuration stanza. For example:

shahar@shahar-backup:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces 

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system

# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface

auto eth0

iface eth0 inet static

        address 10.0.0.1

        netmask 255.255.255.0

        gateway 10.0.0.138

        up ethtool -s eth0 wol g

This will ensure that WoL is enabled in the NIC on each boot. Fore more information see man interfaces.

Test it

One can test WoL by powering off the system and trying to send it the magic packet using:

Command-line tools

GTK+ tool

gWakeOnLan

Configure other operating systems

If the system dual-boots with other operating systems, they should be configured to also enable or, at least, not disable WoL in the NIC. This is beyond the scope of this document but here's a starting point for Microsoft's OS's.

CategoryNetworking CategoryNetworking CategoryPowerManagement

Ubuntu Documentation