ETHERWAKE(8) System Manager's Manual ETHERWAKE(8)
NAME
etherwake - A tool to send a Wake-On-LAN "Magic Packet"
SYNOPSIS
etherwake [options] Host-ID
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the usage of the ether-wake command.
etherwake 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
etherwake 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 the default "eth0".
-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 etherwake program was written by Donald Becker at Scyld Computing Corporation for use with the Scyld(tm) Beowulf System.
Scyld March 31, 2003 ETHERWAKE(8)