ndots/openspec/changes/wake-on-lan/proposal.md at a2d55bf9834dba736f017573e2240cfa234022b7

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commit bf4873eb012235b4d82cd79c4f508064ead301ab
Author: Joao Porta <jpedro.porta@gmail.com>
Date:   Fri Jul 17 17:24:26 2026 -0300

    wake on lan

2026-07-17 17:25:16 -03:00

2.2 KiB

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Why

The user wants to power on jpporta-nixos remotely via Wake-on-LAN (WOL). This is useful when the machine is shut down but the user wants to access it from another device (e.g., over Tailscale + SSH) without manually pressing the power button. Currently the machine has no WOL configuration: nothing keeps the NIC in a low-power listening state, and no tooling exists on the host to inspect or send WOL packets.

What Changes

Enable Wake-on-LAN on the wired Ethernet interface (enp14s0) so the NIC keeps listening for magic packets while the system is powered off.
Add ethtool so the user can inspect the current WOL settings and supported modes on the NIC.
Add wol (the iputils-style wakeonlan command) so WOL packets can be sent from this host to other machines, and from other machines back to this one (using its MAC d8:43:ae:5a:ae:12).
Add a small helper script (wake-jpporta-nixos) that sends a WOL magic packet to this machine's MAC address, so it can be invoked by name.
Document the manual BIOS-level steps that are required for WOL to work (these cannot be set from NixOS).

Capabilities

New Capabilities

wake-on-lan: Configures Wake-on-LAN on the host's wired NIC and provides tooling/scripts to inspect and send magic packets.

Modified Capabilities

None

Impact

Code: A new optional module modules/nixos/wake-on-lan/ will be added and imported into hosts/jpporta-nixos/configuration.nix. The module will expose a custom.wake-on-lan.enable toggle consistent with the project's existing module pattern (see modules/nixos/tailscale/).
System: A systemd unit will be installed that runs ethtool -s enp14s0 wol g on boot and on resume, persisting the WOL setting across reboots and sleep states.
User: Two new commands will be on $PATH: ethtool and wakeonlan, plus a convenience wrapper wake-jpporta-nixos.
Hardware: Requires BIOS-level "Wake on LAN" to be enabled on the motherboard and a stable AC power source. The user must configure these out-of-band.
Network: To wake the machine from outside the LAN, the router must forward UDP port 9 (or 7) to the broadcast address. This is a router-side concern, not configurable from NixOS.

2.2 KiB Raw Blame History

Why