How can you remotely boot your computer and setup a FTP server???

Hi,

I’m confused with how to work with and use WOL. I can't seem to remotely start any of my computers whether is on Lan/Wan or through the internet.

I’ve seen some programs I got off the internet and I understand that you need to know the computers Mac-Address. But what do I need next. I have the modems IP Address, but that changes every time the modem looses power. I also have a Linksys router that has the DCHP feature.

I want to be able to turn my computers on remotely to get information off them and to work on them. I also would like to use one of my old computers and setup an ftp server. Anyone that has experience with remotely turning a computer and setting up a ftp server, I am very interesting in hearing your tactics and looking for help.

 

Which WOL utilities have you tried, and are you sure that the system in question is set up so that WOL is enabled?

I've not had any luck with the webpages that offer to provide wake-on-wan over the internet, but I routinely use a WOL powershell script to wake up the headless desktop I use as a home file server (and then I use Remote Desktop to work on it once it's woken up).

 

I've tried to use Fusion WOL. I was looking at the following website... http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/10/21/how-to-remotely-turn-on-computer-from-lan-and-wan/. What is "WOL powershell script"?

 

I've never tried Fusion WOL. Powershell is a new console shell Microsoft developed for Win systems (i.e., sorta like bash for the linux crowd) as a replacement for the old cmd console shell (i.e., what you get when you do Start->Run->cmd).

The specific script I use, with a little tinkering on my part, is this one. Obviously, to use it you need to have powershell downloaded and installed, which you can get for free off the Microsoft website.

 

The only thing I can imagine is to have the computers in hibernation/sleep state and have an application to wake them up when needed.

 

Ahh, therein lies the secret sauce! You don't have to have the computer in hibernation or sleep to use WOL, provided that your ethernet card is WOL capable - wireless cards are not capable, generally speaking, but almost all wired ethernet cards that come out now (at least in the desktops) are WOL capable, typically you just have to enable WOL in the BIOS and/or configure the card in the OS so that WOL is enabled on the card.

Basically, when that's done, the system continues to feed just enough juice to the ethernet card so that it can read packets on the network to see if the card's MAC address is in a packet. If a particular packet contains the card's MAC repeated 16 times, then that triggers the WOL function, which causes the card to turn the computer on - even from a totally powered off state (other than being completely unplugged, that is ).

 

I've downloaded the powershell program from Microsoft and installed it. I'm looking at the Script in the link you gave me, and now I’m stuck for what to do. How do I use the script?

 

That's cool, is like the inverse of power saving, the laptop can shut off the wireless card to save power.

 

First you should familiarize yourself a little with Powershell and, in particular, you should enable script execution (by default, Powershell will not execute any scripts). I don't remember what the exact command is right now, but if you type (without quotes) "get-help set-executionpolicy" you should get detail on how to set the execution policy so that it will execute local unsigned scripts.

Next, take the script I linked to, and paste it into a new notepad document, which you should save under a a filename of your choosing, but with the extension ".ps1" - again, without quotes.

Then, assuming that you saved the script as "WOL.ps1" you should set the current working directory in the powershell window to the directory in which the script is saved, and then type (without quotes) "./ WOL.ps1 uu:vv:ww:xx:yy:zz" where the string "uu:vv:ww:xx:yy:zz" is replaced with the MAC of the ethernet adapter for the computer you want to wake up.

Provided that computer is on the same local subnet as the computer from which you're executing the script is, upon hitting "Enter" you should see a delay of about 30 seconds or so, and then the target computer should wake up from a cold power off.

 

It's very cool, and very useful if you have a computer you want to turn on without having physical contact with it.

 

Can you turn it off afterward?

 

Not via WOL; however, there are a number of different ways of managing a remote computer, e.g., if you set the permissions correctly, you can manage a remote computer from the WMI administrative tools window on your own computer. You can also use something like Remote Desktop to actually work directly on the computer itself, and shut down that way - which is the way I usually manage my headless box. Finally, if you can work out what sort of criteria you want to use to tell the system to shut itself down automatically, e.g., turning off every night at 10pm, you could set up a scheduled task that would run a batch file containing the cmd console command to shutdown.

 

Good ideas Shyster1.

 

Thanks; sometimes I'm just full of it.

 

The ideaman