Thomas' Tech Tips

How to use Wake on LAN

4 August 2023 - Thomas Damgaard

In order to wake up a device over the network using Wake On LAN (WoL), you need to first make a note of the target device’s MAC address.

Then the device must have wake on lan enabled in BIOS/UEFI. And it must also be connected to the LAN via Ethernet.

On the machine from which you want to wake up the device, you can use the wakeonlan utility to send the magic WoL packet.

In Debian GNU/Linux, install wakeonlan using this command:

sudo apt-get install wakeonlan

Then you just run

wakeonlan <MAC_ADDRESS>

For example:

wakeonlan 00:11:22:33:44:55

This command will broadcast the magic packet to wake up the device with the specified MAC address on the same network.

If everything is configured correctly, the device should receive the WoL magic packet and wake up from sleep or powered-off state.

Keep in mind that WoL functionality may also depend on the network hardware and configuration, so ensure that your network supports WoL broadcasts.

Filed under: bios, debian, hardware, howto, linux, network, tips, wakeonlan, wol

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