GBPVR and Wakeup-On-Lan

[joecru]

Hi Guys,

I got the response from Hauppauge about WOL.

This is not currently supported although some setups will wake up when the unit wakes up, its an odity but apparently its somthing to do with the way the mvp goes searching that triggers some peopls WOL to work.

And this reply was from SHSPVR,

This has been discussed before.
It's a "bootstrap" problem.

The MVP get's it's initial software from the server - so it can't really wake up the server until it has some software to do it with.
( chicken 'n' egg ).

HOWEVER - I'm not saying it's impossible - just not very easy.
To get the MVP to do this would require rewriting / reflashing the bootloader.

This has some problems.
1. We don't have the sourcecode for the bootloader
2. It's really easy to end up with a brick.

There is an intermediate solution of leaving the MVP permanently on - but the Hauppauge software in the MVP will reboot if it doesn't see the server occasionally.

Another solution would be an external wakeup event to the PC - but that would require some electronics.




Regards
Joe

[lagrian]

or you can use 'Wake on PME' if you use the MVP connected straight to your server via a cross-over cable,

Basically any activity detected on the PCI bus will wake the server up , so when I pushed the power button for the MVP it sent some (can be any packet at all) packets to my server so then the BIOS detects activity on the bus and wakes the PC up.

[lagrian]

sorry I should add to that that no-one in the past could replicate this setup.

Also it only worked on a cross-over cable setup so I was thinking it might be that the network connection is blipped very quickly when you push the power button and that the network being unconnected then connected again might cause the wake up.

To be honest I never got to the bottom and have moved away from the MVP as a cleint so I can't test for anyone.

[janviet]

Hi Joe,

Since I had never witnessed a reboot of my MVP, other than when it was power cycled, I decided to do a little test. I switched on my MVP and started a server. When the MVP had completely downloaded dongle.bin, I switched off the server to see if the MVP would return to its boot screen (with the server off, the MVP will stay at the boot screen if it ever reboots). I let the MVP sit for 5 hours (part of the time in standby, but mostly fully awake (i.e. the MVP)) and it never rebooted...

I know this doesn't proof conclusively that the MVP never reboots when it can't find a server, but it does make it likely that it indeed only reboots when it is power cycled.

So, where am I going with this? I disagree with the reply you got at the shspvr forum. I still think that putting WOL code in dongle.bin is a good solution. Only when an MVP is power cycled, will it need to fetch a new dongle.bin.

So, with the WOL code in dongle.bin (and not in the MVP's boot loader) WOL will work every time an MVP is woken up out of standby (i.e. using the power button on the remote). It will only not work after power cycling an MVP (i.e. pulling the power plug and putting it back in), but who regularly power cycles his MVP? I don't.

The nicest solution would be that the server puts its own MAC address somewhere in dongle.bin when it uploads it to an MVP. The MVP uses this MAC address to send a WOL packet to every time it wakes up from standby.

Adding WOL code sounds like a minor undertaking for Hauppauge, and I wonder why they are not willing to accommodate us.

Regards,

Jan

[sub]

I agree that WOL would be put in the dongle.bin. I hardly ever remove the power from my MVP. I believe this WOL feature could be added without help from Hauppuage, but unfortunately I know I dont have the time to do it myself.

Someone would need to setup there linux machine to be able to build a dongle.bin, as described in the linux section of shspvr.com. Effectively you to create the same dongle as Hauppauge, using their pre-existing binaries for the couple of closed source programs from the original dongle.bin, but add a new program that is responsible for 'tailing' the log of the hauppauge mvp binary (which is quite verbose) looking for the 'coming out of standby' message. When you see this message, send the WOL packet.

[joecru]

Hi Guys,

The WOL or Magic Packet is an ethernet packet that contains an adapter's MAC Address, repeated 16 times in the data field.
So how can that be added to the Dongle.bin file.

See Info Below from a Linux Site hope this gives you programmer guys some ideas.

Wake-On-LAN is the generic name for the AMD "Magic Packet" technology. It's very similar to the PCMCIA modem "wake on ring" signal line. The basic idea is that the network adapter has a very-low-power mode to monitor the network for special packet data that will wake up the machine.

The Scyld Wake-up program
Waking up the target machine requires knowing the station address of the target adapter. If a machine has multiple network interfaces, you must identify the one with the WOL cable attached and use that interface's station address.

Download the wake-up program, ether-wake.c . Compile it as suggested by the compile-command at the bottom of the file.

After loading the driver on the target machine, record the Ethernet station address in the detection message. Shut the target machine down and do a soft-power-off. Do not switch power completely off with the power supply switch, or the card will lose its WOL configuration.

From the control machine run something like

[root@vaio log]# ~becker/diag/ether-wake 00:50:04:7c:6e:8c

with the correct station address for your card. This will turn on the target machine.
Supported Adapters
This feature is incorporated in most recent network chips. The list here is only a sample.

WOL was on a special version of the Intel i82557 (EEPro100B), and is now standard on the i82558 (EEPro100+) and i82559. See http://developer.intel.com/design/networ...558pb.htm.

Intel motherboards with on-board 100base* ethernet use the i82557 chip, but most have the updated firmware and a seperate Wake-On-LAN chip. See
http://developer.intel.com/design/motherbd/dk/index.htm
http://developer.intel.com/design/mother...index.htm.

Other chips with this feature are the AMD Fast-PCnet (rare), later versions of the Intel/Digital 21143, the 3Com Cyclone and Tornado (starting Jan or Feb 1998 as the 3c905-revB), and the Symbios chip (but not the nearly-identical gigabit Yellowfin chip).

Complete support requires a low-power transceiver, compatible motherboard, and the right ATX power supply. An ATX power supply provides a low-current stand-by 5V source even when powered off. For wake-on-LAN to work the stand-by power should be enough to power some of the motherboard logic, and the receiver and the address-matching section of the network adapter. Neither power supplied nor power needed is well specified, so not all combinations of components will work.

Although a few adapters and motherboards can source stand-by power through previously unassigned pins on the PCI connector, most systems need a three wire "WOL" cable to connect the stand-by power and wake-up signal from the motherboard to the network adapter.

Options for the 'ether-wake' program
The ether-wake program accepts the following options: -b Send wake-up packet to the broadcast address.
-D Increase the debug level.
-i ifname Use interface ifname instead of the default "eth0".
-p password Append the four or six byte password PW to the packet. (See password section.)
-v Increase the verbosity level. This is useful for examining the actual packet generated.
-V Show the program version string.


WOL Password
A few chip types have an optional WOL password that must be appended in order for the WOL packet to be accepted. This password is either four or six bytes long. A password may be specified in hex (Ethernet address) or dotted decimal (Internet address) format. For example

-p 00:22:44:66:88:aa
-p 192.168.1.1




Regards
Joe

[colin]

If i get the time to put together a linux box, I'm going to take a look into this. I'll let yous know when i have a linux box together to build on

Cheers,
Colin.

[joecru]

Hi Colin,

Go for it. If I can help, give me a shout. re testing etc.

[colin]

Well I finally got linux setup, though the dhcp stuff is misbehaving, but that aside I have downloaded the bits for the cross compiler, etc. and I'll see if i can build a new dongle.bin with telnetd on it to play with.

Sub, do you still have a dongle.bin with telnetd built in it which is usuable with GBPVR?

Joecru, do you have a pointer to the wake-ether.c file? I would like to have a read of the src.

Cheers,
Colin.

[sub]

Quote[/b] ]Sub, do you still have a dongle.bin with telnetd built in it which is usuable with GBPVR?

I never managed to get one, but if you're offering, I wouldn't mind one...