Remotely (re)starting my system via a smart power switch?

[Bo Berglund]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 21:00:35 +0100, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 at 20:13, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> And I just realized that since the laptops have batteries they will not see a
>> power cycle at all....
>
>I don't think that is correct.  Having a battery does not prevent it
>from knowing the state of the power connection.

What I meant is that since the laptop has a battery it is not possible to remove
power and reapply it by switching off/on power to the power supply unit of the
laptop....

>Check in the BIOS to see if there is a setting to start on power up.

On my UEFI type BIOS machine there was such a setting, which I enabled. And then
I put the Shelly Switch S into the power path of that (battery-less) PC.
When this computer locked up (has happened 3 times for uncertain reasons not
being overheating) then it becomes unresponsive but not powered off. By using
the switch I can now restart it by power cycling.

>If not then Wake On LAN may be the solution.  In fact you may well be
>able to use WOL and not have to power cycle at all.

I have never ever touched WOL before, but googling shows it to be a good
alternative to the smart switch.

I am returning home tomorrow to deal with plant watering and the grass lawn etc.
So I will definitely look into enabling WOL on these laptops! :)

Question 1:
-----------

Is all I need to do the following:

On the master PC:

sudo apt install etherwake

Then when I need to start a powered off laptop:

On the master computer:

etherwake <MAC address>

Question 2:
-----------

What is the difference between
etherwake and wakeonlan

Both are mentioned by the document I googled.

>Colin

Thank you for this good suggestion!
Beats the hardware stuff for this use at least.


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden