ETHER-WAKE(8)

📦 version 2.10, in centos-stream 10, centos-stream 9, fedora 43, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0

💖 ETHER-WAKE — bestie edition ✨

okay so this is the manual for ether-wake, from section 8 of the System Manager's Manual. she's a little networking queen and honestly? iconic. let's get into it 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

ether-wake — a tool to send a Wake-On-LAN "Magic Packet" 💫

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ether-wake [options] Host-ID

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

bestie, this page is literally just me explaining how to use the ether-wake command, no biggie 💅

so like, ether-wake is a program that generates and transmits a Wake-On-LAN (WOL) "Magic Packet" — and that's the thing you use to restart machines that have been soft-powered-down (that's the ACPI D3-warm state, iykyk). it builds the standard AMD Magic Packet format, and optionally you can sneak a password in there too 🔐

the one single required parameter? it's a station (MAC) address, OR a host ID that can be translated into a MAC address by an ethers(5) database specified in nsswitch.conf(5). that's it, that's the vibe check. 👑

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

so important, listen up: ether-wake needs a single dash (-) in front of options. not double, bestie, single. a summary of options is included below ✨

  • -b — send the wake-up packet to the broadcast address. just yeet it out to everybody 📢
  • -D — increase the Debug Level. (more D's = more yapping, essentially 💀)
  • -i ifname — use interface ifname instead of sending a wake packet to all interfaces. so pick your fave and commit to her 🎀
  • -p passwd — append a four or six byte password to the packet. ngl only a few adapters need or support this one. 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 — no switching it up, that's the rule 🚫
  • -V — show the program version information. slay, now you know which one you're running 💖

🌈 EXIT STATUS 🌈

okay so here's the tea on what she gives you back when she's done ☕

  • this program returns 0 on success 🎉
  • a permission failure (e.g. you ran it 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 🔥

💀 SECURITY 💀

bestie this part is serious, no jokes, pay attention.

on some non-Linux systems, dropping root capability allows the process to be dumped, traced or debugged. and if someone traces this program, they get control of a raw socket. Linux handles this safely, but beware when porting this program. that's the whole warning, and it's lowkey a big one, so don't skip it 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

the ether-wake program was written by Donald Becker</> at Scyld Computing Corporation, for use with the Scyld(™) Beowulf System. king behavior, honestly ✨

and that's the page!! this whole thing came from the Scyld source, dated March 31, 2003, and it lives in section ETHER-WAKE(8) of the manual. mwah, go wake some computers bestie 💋🦋

📦 where this page comes from