Several months ago I finally got the (WOL) Wake On Lan feature of my RTL8111/8168B NIC card working. The problem was that a new driver (other than the provided by Debian) and a special PCI configuration was needed.

The other problem I had to deal with was the ADSL Router (Comtrend HG532c, The one provided by the Spanish ISP Jazztel) configuration:

• Open the required port: This was an easy one just opening the 7 a 9 port and forwarding them to the server we want to WOL from the internet
• Make the router remember the server’s tuple MAC/IP address. That was easy too, but some manual work was needed as when router is restarted the ARP table is flushed.  🙁

In my current job I had to change recently some configuration and restart more than 600 IP phones. To perform such titanic task I created a quick and dirty script using expect. It worked like a charm and made me think about automatize the way I set the ARP table in my Comtrend HG532c ADSL router.

The scripts is very easy to understand. It just simulates a Telnet session with your router:

1. Login and password
2. Set the required MAC/IP tuple
3. Displays the ARP table

Here you are:

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
set timeout 10
set env(TERM)

set router "router"  #your router's dns name or IP
set login "admin"    #your router's login. admin is the default
set password "admin" #your router's password. admin is the default
set ip "192.168.1.2" #your server's IP address (not the dns name)
set mac "2f:1e:8a:84:2a:f9" #your server's MAC 

spawn telnet $router
expect "Login: "
send -- "$login\r"
expect "Password: "
send -- "$password\r"
expect "ATP>"
send "sh\r"
expect "# "
send "arp -s $ip $mac\r"
expect "# "
## check that all is right
send "arp -a\r"
expect "# "

The output must be similar to:

juan@mediacenter:~/bin$ ./ActualizarTablaArpRouterADSL.sh
spawn telnet router
Trying 192.168.1.1...
Connected to router.
Escape character is '^]'.
-------------------------------
-----Welcome to ATP Cli------
-------------------------------

Login: admin
Password:
ATP>sh

BusyBox vv1.9.1 (2011-05-25 16:23:47 CST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

# arp -s 192.168.1.2 00:1e:8c:84:2a:f9
# arp -a
? (192.168.1.2) at 2F:1E:8A:84:2A:F9 [ether] PERM on br0

As can be seen in the last line the router have set the ARP entry as permanent…. permanent till router next restart. 🙁 But at least every time this script is run the ARP is set automagically 🙂

The next thing to do is to put this script in a crontab job, /etc/rc.local, etc of one of your servers. This way every time it runs you will be sure that you can restart your server from the internet.

My decision was add a line in my server’s /etc/rc.local file like this:

#### Sets the MAC/IP tuple in ADSL router for WOL from internet
/path/to/ActualizarTablaArpRouterADSL.sh |mail -s "`hostname` MAC para el WOL" email@domain.tld

This has 2 added benefits:

1. I will know when my server is started
2. I will know that my router configuration is ready for wake on lan

The last step is have at least to ways to start your computer from the internet. Mine are:

1. Online Wake-On-LAN web page.
2. Wol Wake on Lan Wan for my Android phone.

I have created a github project: expect-update-arp-table-ADSL-router-for-wol (just in case other features can be added later) where you can download also the source code.

Enjoy!