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rebooting a hung machine over wifi

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dpopiz

Diamond Member
I'm working on a mesh network at my school but there's kind of a big problem of how to reboot hung machines without having to go in physically and flip the switch.

there's the network power controllers but they cost $200 so that's out of the question.

>>what I'm wondering is if there is any way to reboot a machine that has HUNG (frozen) over wifi or if there's any other crazy idea you have of how to do this..
 
unless it is a server with something like iLO installed, i doubt it

what OS is it? You could always try the cli shutdown command even though it is locked up
 
psshutdown might work as well, depending on status. Question, why would Wifi matter with this, you can't reboot a machine over wired any different way. Unless you PC is PoE 😉
 
no, I'm not talking about a software thing, because in this hypothetical situation, the SOFTWARE IS FROZEN.

here's an idea I just had though:
use wake-on-lan (I don't know if most wifi cards support WOL but at least the orinoco ones do). Then just solder a transistor across the reset button header pins and make it controlled by the WOL header on the wifi card
 
Are you and EE? if not, then please put down the soldering iron and back away from the PC.....

I don't know for sure, but I REALLY doubt that would work. WOL sometimes works with frozon PC's, sometimes not. And when you say the "SOFTWARE IS FROZEN" you need to be more specific, as to do a remote shutdown you just need network functionality and RPC working. If you have enought locked up computers that are so hammered they cannot be remotely shut down, you need to fix that problem, not try and work around it.

For remote shutdown, you only have 2 options, remove power controllers, or software (such as shutdown.exe for XP, or psshutdown for 2K/XP)
 
If the computer is hooked to the Wireless through a Wire (I.e. the Wireless is Stand alone Mesh unit), and the computer is WOL it would work with WOL magic packet.

Otherwise, you walk and you flip the switch.😉

:sun:

 
Originally posted by: JackMDS
If the computer is hooked to the Wireless through a Wire (I.e. the Wireless is Stand alone Mesh unit), and the computer is WOL it would work with WOL magic packet.

Otherwise, you walk and you flip the switch.😉

:sun:
Click to expand...

yeah I was thinking of doing that.
now I have a new question cuz I just realized this might not work as I need it to:

Does the NIC only accept magic packets when the computer is off? I read somewhere that the NIC goes into a special mode or something to accept magic packets while the computer is off. Cuz I need it to accept magic packets while the compuer is ON.
 
If you are looking for a cheap solution to turn off the power at the machine check out X10's phone controller. You can find it on sale on the net for about $50 and you could turn off one machine. Adding machines after that would be just buying an appliance controller for a few bucks.

John
 
This is an interesting topic, but it would seem that it could also be open to abuse, should unwanted parties be able to send those sorts of packets. What really is neede is some sort of logical out-of-band signalling, using the same physical medium (wireless, in this case). Perhaps some sort of special hardware "chirp", that isn't a packet at all.. or perhaps a "chirp" followed by a packet that is a specially-configured encrypted "magic packet", that authenticates the chirp, and contains the system-level command to execute. The decryption key would have already been configured and stored in the NIC's flash EEPROM.

This of course assumes that the system in question isn't hung in hardware, only in software, and some sort of SMI/PME(?) signal could trigger a reset/reboot. (Perhaps cause the NIC to assert the signal for parity failure on the PCI bus? What do most motherboards do in that case, I would think reboot.)

Alternatively, there might be a market for NICs that have a header connection onboard, that contain a pass-through that is wired to the mobo's RESET signal, the same header used to connect the front-panel physical reset button. Wire that button instead to the NIC, and wire the NIC to the mobo, and now either the phsyical button, or the NIC, could be used to initiate a hardware reset.

Sounds like a neat idea to me.
 
Originally posted by: dpopiz
REMEMBER THE COMPUTER IS HUNG!!! morons! stop suggesting apps and read the post
Click to expand...

I have used psshutdown and shutdown.exe successfully on many hung computers. I would say it works on a hung computer probably 99.9% of the time.

Usually when a computer is hung, it's just the gui (the buggiest and most unstable part of Microsoft's OSes) and most background tasks will still work.
 
Originally posted by: Brazen
Originally posted by: dpopiz
REMEMBER THE COMPUTER IS HUNG!!! morons! stop suggesting apps and read the post
Click to expand...

I have used psshutdown and shutdown.exe successfully on many hung computers. I would say it works on a hung computer probably 99.9% of the time.

Usually when a computer is hung, it's just the gui (the buggiest and most unstable part of Microsoft's OSes) and most background tasks will still work.
Click to expand...

ok I see, well this will be linux which is stable enough that I probably won't have to deal with hangs like that anyway. I'm just worried about hangs caused by low quality hardware (which I will be using)
 
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