ProLiant MicroServer with Ubuntu and Wake on Lan Issue

pinkegobox · 9 Jan 2011 at 22:05

Hi all. I've been trying to avoid making this post, but unfortunately my Linux experience isn't good enough and I'm at a complete loss.

After seeing the MicroServer thread I couldn't help myself, and ordered one in. I love it, nice form factor - and I've got Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop on there.

(I'm even thinking of sticking a low profile graphics card in, something like this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-239-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1863 so that I can use it as a HTPC, but that's another thread.)

Anyway, I'm desperately trying to get the Wake-On-LAN functionality working and I've spent more hours on this now than I'd care to admit.

I'd briefly had Win7 on there the other day, and took the time to update the BIOS. I didn't update the network card firmware though - should I have done?

I've installed ethtool and set

Code:

ethtool -s eth0 wol g

and I believe I've got this correctly set up to start on startup.

When I restart the machine, here's the output I get from ethtool

Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
MDI-X: Unknown
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0x000000ff (255)
Link detected: yes

Has anyone got any ideas what I could be missing?

Zarf · 9 Jan 2011 at 23:29

Is WOL enabled in the BIOS too? Have you tested that WOL works on any other pc's in your network?

pinkegobox · 9 Jan 2011 at 23:55

It's enabled in the BIOS, and when I send the WOL packet you can see the network light on the front of the server flash.

I've not tried going the other way, as I don't really have any other machines on the network that support it. I will try it with my MBP tomorrow night though, and see if I can get that one working.

Demon · 9 Mar 2011 at 19:13

A bit of a revivial, but some interesting results after I messed around..

Server 1 running Windows Server 2008 R2
Server 2 running FreeNAS 0.7.2

WOL works on Server 1 is I boot to WS2008, then shutdown, if I pull the power then WOL won't work until I once again go into WS2008 and then shutdown.

WOL never works on Server 2 (FreeNAS).

I suspect that like some WOL articles suggest, you almost have to instruct the NIC to do WOL from the OS, and on shutdown, as long as the power isn't cycled, it will work..

Stupid, and annoying really..

When it works, any old WOL/Magic Packet program seems to work,

Regarding Linux, I have found,
http://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-lan-doesnt-work-after-linux-shutdown-841960/

using ethtool you might be able to put the NIC in the right state before shutting down the OS..

[edit] With some more reading, it seems that some *nix drivers for the Broadcom don't detect the WOL feature of the NIC in the Microserver, so you can't do it anyway.. e.g. FreeNAS (ifconfig doesn't show any WOL flags)..