Back to main site | Back to man page index

ETHER-WAKE(8)                                  System Manager's Manual                                  ETHER-WAKE(8)



NAME
       ether-wake - A tool to send a Wake-On-LAN "Magic Packet"

SYNOPSIS
       ether-wake [options] Host-ID

DESCRIPTION
       This manual page documents the usage of the ether-wake command.

       ether-wake  is  a program that generates and transmits a Wake-On-LAN (WOL) "Magic Packet", used for restarting
       machines that have been soft-powered-down (ACPI D3-warm state). It generates the  standard  AMD  Magic  Packet
       format,  optionally  with  a password included.  The single required parameter is a station (MAC) address or a
       host ID that can be translated to a MAC address by an ethers(5) database specified in nsswitch.conf(5)

OPTIONS
       ether-wake needs a single dash (´-´) in front of options.  A summary of options is included below.

       -b     Send the wake-up packet to the broadcast address.

       -D     Increase the Debug Level.

       -i ifname
              Use interface ifname instead of sending a wake packet to all interfaces.

       -p passwd
              Append a four or six byte password to the packet. Only a few adapters need or support this. A six  byte
              password  may  be  specified  in  Ethernet  hex  format (00:22:44:66:88:aa) or four byte dotted decimal
              (192.168.1.1) format.  A four byte password must use the dotted decimal format.


       -V     Show the program version information.


EXIT STATUS
       This program returns 0 on success.  A permission failures (e.g. run as a non-root user)  results  in  an  exit
       status  of  2.  Unrecognized or invalid parameters result in an exit status of 3.  Failure to retrieve network
       interface information or send a packet will result in an exit status of 1.


SEE ALSO
       arp(8).

SECURITY
       On some non-Linux systems dropping root capability allows the process to be dumped, traced  or  debugged.   If
       someone  traces  this  program,  they get control of a raw socket.  Linux handles this safely, but beware when
       porting this program.

AUTHOR
       The ether-wake program was written by Donald Becker at Scyld Computing Corporation for use with  the  Scyld(™)
       Beowulf System.



Scyld                                               March 31, 2003                                      ETHER-WAKE(8)