[lug] OT: Wake On Lan

[D. Stimits]

Mr Viggy wrote:
> Is it actually rebooting, or comming out of "sleep" mode?  My impression 
> was that WOL would bring a machine out of sleep, but not reboot the 
> system (unless you told it to).

Sleep mode is not used (at least I don't think it is), it is actually 
starting from turned off. Perhaps I'll have to look closer and figure 
out if the owner has done something to cause sleep mode instead of off 
without my knowing. I was under the impression that WOL would work on 
"off" power machines if the motherboard/power supply combination 
supported a minimal electrical power to the network card when "off". I 
know that the NIC's have power on all but one local machine when turned 
off, because the network switch panel lights show when a NIC is active, 
and it is active on all machines here when they are "off" (except for 
the very old one that truly powers off when the off button is hit...in 
that case the switch indicates the link is gone). This is where I wonder 
if all of the manufacturers do WOL the same way, and exactly what the 
requirements are to kill it off and disable it; having a port I could 
firewall would be so darn simple if it would do the job, but I bet it is 
not that simple.

> 
> You should prolly upgrade to WinME.  98 has, well, issues.  I'm running 
> 98 on my "soft router" machine (I have an internal DSL card), and about 

Eeeek! [sorry :P ]

> once a month or so, it stops all Internet activity.  I have no idea why, 
> it just does.  Once I reboot the system, all is fine again.  Oh, and 
> this system is shut off every evening (i.e. it's not running all the time).

If it were my machine I'd make it Win 2K, but it is not mine. There is 
not much hope of it being "upgraded" (or at least changed to a lesser evil).

> 
> Viggy
> 
> D. Stimits wrote:
> 
>> I am wondering if anyone here is familiar with how Wake On Lan (WOL) 
>> is communicated? In this case, it is the Linksys LNE100TX, ver. 5.1, 
>> but perhaps there are common ways to implement this.
>>
>> For one, is there a specific port used, or maybe a broadcast message? 
>> Also, does this WOL feature detect when an ethernet cable has been 
>> connected (I know the local switch/hub detects this), and run WOL just 
>> by detecting a new physical connection?
>>
>> My motive for asking this is that one machine in the newly wired house 
>> sometimes spontaneously turns on. WOL has been turned off in the BIOS 
>> as far as I can tell (the card is not integrated, so the BIOS may not 
>> have complete control). The system (use the word loosely) is Win98 on 
>> fairly modern hardware. I am trying to figure out why it can sometimes 
>> reboot. Originally it was found to do this when turning off power on 
>> the bridge and switch (testing UPS software), but on rare occasions it 
>> does this at other times. My hope is that there is something I can use 
>> the Linux filtering bridge for to at least remove all Internet 
>> influences, and narrow the debugging down to the LAN or machine itself.
>>
>> D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi.com