Kaseya Community

WOL works, but wake every 2 minutes

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Feb 8, 2010 10:27 PM

I have many machines configured to Wake when pinged/comm'd with, by checking both boxes for the network card "Allow computer to turn off this device to save power" and "Allow this device to wake computer". I actually have a VBS that does this for me by editing the following key entries:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318}\\PNPCapabilities

Set that key to 32 decimal.

I can ping the machines and they wake up. I have found through Uptime reporting though that these machines are waking up, going to sleep 2 minutes later as expected, and then wake up again. I know theres something on the nework, whether it be broadcasts, multicasts, who knows, that is waking these machines up. Has anyone had experience with this? I don't want these machine waking this often. I basically need it to wake only when directly communicated with.

Also for anyone interested, as great as WOL is, I found a more managable way to run mainteancne at night and wake machines.

I created scripts that generate a scheduled task on the machine, which will wake the machine at the specified time. Scheduled task wakes a machine from HIBERNATION and all other forms of sleep/standby (even level 3 standby). By default the machine will fall back asleep if no user IO is detected, so to keep the machine online for a few hours, use caffeine for Windows XP and StayAwake for Vista/7. Works like a charm. Since we have agents on each machine, you simply run the script once that creates the recurring nightly/weekly scheduled task to wake the machine at the specified time, then schedule your maintenance scripts to run during that window. I plan to do this in K2 as well since it's more direct, managable, and WOL has too many variables involved that can cause it to fail, or the above eradic behavior.

Legacy Forum Name: WOL works, but wake every 2 minutes,
Legacy Posted By Username: boostmr2

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Feb 9, 2010 8:27 AM

A new feature of the Scheduler in K 2 is the support of WOL.

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: kaseya

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Feb 10, 2010 12:19 AM

I saw that. Unfortunately, I've been given advice like this since June-July timeframe and held off on doing things that needed to get done because "This will be a new feature in K2". Can't wait any longer. So unless you are giving me K2 today, this is 100% unacceptable. Chances are I won't see it for another month or longer.

Does anyone know what network traffic would wake up a machine? I know pinging it directly does, however I have something that is waking these guys up and it's hard tracking what it is. If I find anything in the meantime i will let you know.

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: boostmr2

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Feb 10, 2010 3:05 AM

boostmr2
I saw that. Unfortunately, I've been given advice like this since June-July timeframe and held off on doing things that needed to get done because "This will be a new feature in K2". Can't wait any longer. So unless you are giving me K2 today, this is 100% unacceptable. Chances are I won't see it for another month or longer.

Well said and much agreed with

boostmr2

Does anyone know what network traffic would wake up a machine? I know pinging it directly does, however I have something that is waking these guys up and it's hard tracking what it is. If I find anything in the meantime i will let you know.

The perverbial Magic Packet is:

The magic packet is a broadcast frame containing anywhere within its payload: 6 bytes of ones (resulting in hexadecimal FF FF FF FF FF FF), followed by sixteen repetitions of the target computer's MAC address.

Since the magic packet is only scanned for the string above, and not actually parsed by a full protocol stack, it may be sent as a broadcast packet of any network- and transport-layer protocol. It is typically sent as a UDP datagram to port 0, 7 or 9, or, in former times, as an IPX packet.

Now that said, and having re-read your original post, I'm not sure if it's the "wake on lan" packet that is doing it. IIRC the WOL packets wont wake a machine in hibernate/suspend/sleep modes.

Do you have anything on that network that would send out random pings? I once had a LaCie device that came with software that would send random pings and WOL packets to make sure it wasnt "sleeping".

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: thirteentwenty

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Feb 10, 2010 10:21 PM

That's exactly what I am thinking. Technically this isn't "WOL". WOL is technically waking a machine that is plugged into a powersource but is OFF, aka "Shutdown". I'm actually only waking machines that are in hibernate or standby 1-3, aka "sleep". The NIC setting I provided above allow the NIC to wake the machine from hibernate and standby. The downfall to this is so much as a random ping wakes the machine up, and I am starting to think any broadcast or multicast may be doing the same thing.

Vista powercfg has a property that tells you what last woke the machine, but it only gives the device that woke it, not why.

I'm sticking with the scheduled tasks method and turning off the "allow this device to wake the machine" as it is not needed with my current solution.

Legacy Forum Name: General Discussion,
Legacy Posted By Username: boostmr2

WOL - Wake All Devices

"Wake Machine" Through Agent on DELL Optiplex (serveral models) not working, WOL CMD works

Is it practical / realistic to run a script every 5 minutes on a server?

Wol

WOL does not work from the Quick View Menu

WOL works, but wake every 2 minutes