You can turn on any computer remotely using Wake-on-LAN (or WOL). It's really handy if you need to grab a file from your home computer but you don't want to turn on that computer 24/7 just for one file.
Requirement:
- You need to know something about computer/Bios/LAN/Router as I can't explain everything here.
- You need to somehow able to be in your home LAN. Possible methods:
- You can VPN back to your home network.
- You can ssh back to your home server (This is what I do)
- You forward port 0,7 or 9 on your home router to your computer. (highly NOT recommended since everyone will be possible to turn on your computer)
Steps:
Let's call your home computer "Computer A" and your other computer "Computer B"
In "Computer A"
- Go to your BIOS, and turn on WakeOnLAN. I might be called something else. Look for something like "Wake On Lan," "Remote Wake Up" or etc.
- Turn on WOL
- Find out your network interface name by "ifconfig". Normally it's similar to "eth0."
- Turn on WOL
ethtool -s eth0 wol g
Since the effect of this command only last till next restart, you will need to set up a script to turn it on every time you start your "Computer A" - See Reference 1 - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=234588 for detail
- Find out your network interface's MAC address
ifconfig | grep HW | cut -d' ' -f11-
it's something like "12:34:56:78:9a:bc". Copy it down and turn off your computer.
- (Optional) If your "Computer B" is a Windows machine, you will also need to find out Computer A's ip address.
ifconfig | grep "inet addr" | cut -d' ' -f12-12| tr -d 'adr:'
It will look like '192.168.1.127'
In "Computer B"
- If it is a Ubuntu or any other Linux distro.
wakeonlan 12:34:56:78:9a:bc
the above command should be sufficient. If it doesn't work, try the command again with port 7.
wakeonlan -p 7 12:34:56:78:9a:bc
- If it is a Windows machine, try the following.
wolcmd 123456789abc 192.168.1.127 255.255.255.255 7
Hope it helps someone.
Reference:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=234588
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#Sending_the_magic_packet