I really wish more people used WOL. It is probably one of the most underrated things in the world of wired networking. If you aren’t familiar, WOL (Wake on Lan) allows you to remotely turn on your computer. This could be from another computer or even your Android device. It works by supplying a little bit of power to your Ethernet card to allow it to listen for the “wake up” signal.
Unfortunately, not every motherboard supports WOL. So you will have to browse your motherboard’s bios to see if it is available. For this tutorial, I am going to show you how to do this with Linux. I have a (old) Windows tutorial if you are running Windows.
What You Will Need:
- Computer Running Linux
- Wake On Lan Android Client (Optional)
How To:
First, you need to download ethtool:
sudo apt-get install ethool
Next, check to see if your Ethernet card support wake on lan:
sudo ethtool eth0
If you see g _next to _Wake-on, then you are good to go. If you see something else (d) then type in the following:
sudo ethool -s eth0 g
Finally, we need to add a line in the network interfaces:
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
Add the following:
up ethool -s eth0 wol g
That’s it!