Dell WOL problems

[CAWJames]

Morning all,

 

I am currently building a FOG infrastructure for our college, so I have a little more control over the ever expanding pool of computers I have to look after.

 

While FOG works as advertised, even after my myriad of adjustments and tweaks, I am having problems with my Optiplexes.

 

It seems to only be the 360 model at the moment, but as I get to other parts of the college and encounter 755's, 760's, 780's who know what I will find.

 

WOL only seems to work if the computer has been shutdown normally by windows.

 

If FOG auto shutdowns the computer after performing some kind of task, the computer is non-responsive to WOL until Windows is loaded and then shutdown again.

 

I think I have this narrowed to the shutdown states which each OS leaves the computer in.

 

Windows leaves it in G2/S5 on shutdown, and Linux leaves it in a fully powered down state, G3.

 

I know how to adjust Ubuntu's halt options to soft_off rather than poweroff, but can't for the life of me work out how to change it on the init image for FOG.

 

I have mounted the boot image, but it being a variation of the core linux, it has none of the niceties that Ubuntu and other distros afford us.

 

So has anyone come across this on the 360 or other Optiplex, and found a way to fix this WOL problem?

 

Any help would be appreciated

 

 

Thanks

 

James

[CAWJames]

Yeah, last thing I checked, as this was the reason they werent waking up in the first place. Seems the 360 ships with Low Power mode turned on. Hence blocking WOL etc.

 

I have been through all BIOS options I can find, but nothing describes a shutdown state that would give me only WOL from a windows shutdown.

 

I have now cooked my own kernel from 3.2.6. I'll see what results that gives.

 

Thanks for the reply

 

James

[Duke5A]

I've had a few problems with Dell systems and WOL. A couple of things to check:

 

1) In this BIOS, look for an option called low power mode (called different things in various models). This is enabled by default on some models and will power the NIC down when the system shuts down and will ignore WOL, even if enabled, as a result.

 

2) I imaged a lab full of Optiplex 780s that were functioning fine with WOL and Windows XP. I imaged Windows 7 onto them and WOL broke. It turns out that the included driver in Windows 7 (which was a Microsoft driver) is what was tripping it up. Installing the real Intel driver cleared up the issue with no other configuration changes.

 

I hope this helps.