Wake-on-LAN

Post your suggestions here if there are new features or applications that you would like added to the Ultimate Boot CD.

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kethd
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:29 am
Location: Boston MA US

Wake-on-LAN

#1 Post by kethd » Tue Feb 05, 2013 6:40 am

Wake-on-LAN is a nifty obscure feature of most computers. When enabled in BIOS, a special "magic packet" can be sent to the LAN port from another computer using the MAC address, and the computer will turn on. A router etc network infrastructure is not even required -- a simple direct peer-to-peer Cat 5/6 cross-over cable works fine!

The Windows program RemoteRebootX is a useful WoL tool. Are there any tools in current UBCD to do this? Would it be feasible to add some tool? Are there any in the FreeDOS world?

Perhaps the DOS command line program WOL.EXE from Gammadyne Corporation would work? Maybe not, maybe in only runs under Windows?

ferdnyc
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 9:07 am
Location: Bronx, NY, USA

Re: Wake-on-LAN

#2 Post by ferdnyc » Sat Feb 23, 2013 9:25 am

The command-line tool ether-wake, which is included in most Linux distributions, is present in PartedMagic. You can see the man page here, although the PartedMagic version is limited to the -b, -i, and -p options.

That's not ideal, mostly because of how long PartedMagic takes to start up, but it's an option. Perhaps someone can find a DOS utility for FreeDOS that'd make things quicker... but I have to be honest, I'm not sure I personally understand the utility of it. Booting one computer into a recovery environment like UBCD, just to start another computer by WOL, seems like a really esoteric use case. Is that really something that you'd find useful in practice?

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the usefulness of WOL itself. It's just the idea of performing the activations from a recovery environment that strikes me as unusual.

pica
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Oct 13, 2012 9:35 am

Re: Wake-on-LAN

#3 Post by pica » Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:17 am

ferdnyc wrote: Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the usefulness of WOL itself. It's just the idea of performing the activations from a recovery environment that strikes me as unusual.
(At work) send WOL to home PC :: using Clonzilla or Rsync, back up lappy486 :: ssh into home box and shut it down when done.

Not strictly recovery, but I hope stuff like this is in the UBCD mission statement.

pica
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Oct 13, 2012 9:35 am

Re: Wake-on-LAN

#4 Post by pica » Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:08 am

ferdnyc wrote: That's not ideal, mostly because of how long PartedMagic takes to start up, but it's an option. Perhaps someone can find a DOS utility for FreeDOS that'd make things quicker...

http://gammadyne.com/cmdline.htm

Look at the one on the bottom, WOL.exe . Unknown if they work in Freedos.

Gammadyne says they're freeware, but not open source. you could buy access to the source though. Personally, I'd just use PartedMagic as I probably want to use something like ssh or clonzilla as the next step.

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