[LinuxBIOS] remote reset

Paul Millar paul at astro.gla.ac.uk
Tue Feb 27 12:00:47 CET 2007


On Monday 26 February 2007 00:05, Ryan Moszynski wrote:
> can a machine running linuxbios be remotely reset/reboot from
> crashed/frozen state over a network connection?

If you want an ultra-cheap solution to this and you have a NIC with external 
Wakeup-on-LAN (WoL) connector (such as the old Intel EtherExpress Pro), you 
can connect the WoL signal (via a transistor and a few resistors) to the mobo 
reset switch.

You send the WoL ethernet frame and the machine reboots, independent of any 
BIOS or software state.

Its probably not such a good idea for production environments, but in my 
experience it does work very nicely.  The cost (per machine) is probably ~£1 
+10--20 minutes of time building the unit and install it.  In fact, it was 
cheaper to replace the NICs (for ones with external WoL connectors) that to 
use external signalling device.

The electronics should be safe: I believe a properly made Reset-on-LAN will 
not damage a machine; but, needless to say, you do this at your own risk!

I'm putting together a page together describing this in more details.  I can 
post the details here, if people want.

HTH,

Paul.
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