I am currently running SuSE 12.1, however, I am considering an upgrade to 13.1, and new requirements lol! in my home would be fulfilled with WOL support. With regard to this post, I understand that there are problems getting WOL to work with the 12.3 kernel. Have the WOL issues been resolved with 13.1, or would I be better off sticking with 12.1 for now?
Thanks.
On 2014-02-07 18:36, wiyosaya wrote:
>
> I am currently running SuSE 12.1, however, I am considering an upgrade
> to 13.1, and new requirements lol! in my home would be fulfilled with
> WOL support. With regard to ‘this post’ (http://tinyurl.com/nybhd74), I
> understand that there are problems getting WOL to work with the 12.3
> kernel. Have the WOL issues been resolved with 13.1, or would I be
> better off sticking with 12.1 for now?
You can not stay on 12.1, it is obsolete and gets no security patches.
If there is a security hole you will be exposed. In Linux there are no
antivirus, but you have to stay current.
Regarding your WOL problem, I suggest you try and find out, unless
somebody happens to know and comments first 
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
My $0.02 FWIW -
Since it is a requirement for my server to have wake-on-lan functionality, it seems rather pointless for me to go through an upgrade process to an OS that does not support it, or just to find out if it works.
I am not particularly concerned about hacking as I have no open ports at all, and I drop all echo requests as per good firewall rules. The wake-on-lan NIC would be to my internal lan, and not the external one, so that would not open up any hacking opportunities.
It is easy for you to say “you can’t stay with 12.1,” but if newer releases break functionality, why would anyone want to move on if there are no solutions to the broken functionality? I have already made at least a partial effort to find out the answer to that question, and it does appear that with 12.3 wol was broken, yet searching the release notes for 13.1 reveals nothing about it being fixed.
If you were out shopping for anything that provides some feature you require and you found out that that feature was broken in whatever it is you were looking for, would you still buy it?
As a developer with nearly 20-years of experience, I completely understand that old versions of anything are deprecated as those who deliver such products cannot maintain old versions forever, however, there are people on the other side of the equation who consume such products. XP has lived for so many years because it is reliable, much faster than most of the modern win operating systems, it is not broken, and there’s a saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
The push model works to a point, but when it breaks something that people use and depend on, yet does not provide a replacement, does it still make sense?
My apologies for the rant and the somewhat off-topic post.
On 2014-02-07 23:26, wiyosaya wrote:
> It is easy for you to say “you can’t stay with 12.1,” but if newer
> releases break functionality, why would anyone want to move on if there
> are no solutions to the broken functionality?
How do you expect broken functionality to be repaired if you are not
prepared to find out if it is still broken and then report it? >:-)
In Bugzilla, not here.
> I have already made at
> least a partial effort to find out the answer to that question, and it
> does appear that with 12.3 wol was broken, yet searching the release
> notes for 13.1 reveals nothing about it being fixed.
Release notes do not tell everything.
You say it was broken on 12.3. Was it reported in Bugzilla? If so, that
report will say if the issue was solved. If it was never reported in
Bugzilla, then do not expect it to be solved, even less expect the
release notes to say it!
Linux works differently. You have to learn different tricks.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
On 02/07/2014 07:14 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2014-02-07 23:26, wiyosaya wrote:
>
>> It is easy for you to say “you can’t stay with 12.1,” but if newer
>> releases break functionality, why would anyone want to move on if there
>> are no solutions to the broken functionality?
>
> How do you expect broken functionality to be repaired if you are not
> prepared to find out if it is still broken and then report it? >:-)
>
> In Bugzilla, not here.
>
>> I have already made at
>> least a partial effort to find out the answer to that question, and it
>> does appear that with 12.3 wol was broken, yet searching the release
>> notes for 13.1 reveals nothing about it being fixed.
>
> Release notes do not tell everything.
>
> You say it was broken on 12.3. Was it reported in Bugzilla? If so, that
> report will say if the issue was solved. If it was never reported in
> Bugzilla, then do not expect it to be solved, even less expect the
> release notes to say it!
>
> Linux works differently. You have to learn different tricks.
Please remember that we are a community. That conveys rights and privileges, but
also responsibility. It is possible that none of the testers ever use WOL. I
know I certainly do not. If this is a critical part of your operation, then I
think it would be in your best interests to test it and file bug reports if it
does not work.
One other thing to remember is that WOL is a function of the hardware and the
driver. Even if I were to test this function, my hardware is not the same as
yours and my experiences would not likely apply to you.
On the inside, I am sure that it is as difficult to understand the perspective of those of us who are on the outside, and it is just as difficult for those of us on the outside to understand the perspective of those on the inside. I am sure all of us live busy lives. I know I do. My installation of 12.1 has been working trouble free for several years, and an upgrade represents several days of an investment of my “spare-time,” time that I really do not have at the moment.
I am not trying to start a flame war here, however, I find that sometimes my perception of the attitudes of those in the open-source community is just a bit too much on the side of less than helpful. People like me come to a forum like this for help, and when met with an attitude of WTF - you have to spend days of your time because you are doing everything wrong does not help. Please consider an approach more along the lines of “you may want to upgrade because your version is outdated,” which, as I see it, is far less confrontational than “you can’t stay on 12.1 because it is no longer supported.” As much as you might not want to hear it, this is very similar to the attitude in the commercial market - a realm that the open-source community is said to detest.
Back on topic - for anyone interested - I posted at Linux.org, and the response that I received was that WOL should be a function of hardware only, and that once set in the bios, the OS should make no difference as WOL should be just like pushing the power button.
So, my 12.1 PC’s bios does not support WOL which means that whether I like or not, I will need to rebuild my system if I want WOL.
I have an update from the Linux.org thread that I started on this. From what was said there, the OS can disable WOL - therefore, it is not entirely a hardware issue.
I quoted a thread above that stated that SuSE 12.3 was shutting down the NIC so that WOL would not work. I have no control over whether that person filed a bugzilla report, however, IF someone has WOL enabled, it seems odd that the OS would shut it down.
And yes, everyone’s hardware is different, so if I were to test this, it seems that my “test” would be less than meaningful as lwfinger stated above.
Is there a HOWTO or some other documentation on how to setup WOL with SuSE 13.1?
Thanks.
Answered my own question.
I found these items describing how to configure Linux to WOL - Apparently, most Ethernet drivers in the Linux distros have WOL disabled by default.
unbuntu Forums - HOWTO: Set your system up for Wake On LAN (WOL)
Of course, these procedures will need to be customized for SuSE as necessary.
This is, essentially, what was tried by another SuSE user as described in this post.
On 2014-02-12 19:26, wiyosaya wrote:
>
> Answered my own question.
>
> I found these items describing how to configure Linux to WOL -
> Apparently, most Ethernet drivers in the Linux distros have WOL disabled
> by default.
Curious…
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
FWIW, my ethernet device is a
Vendor: pci 0x14e4 "Broadcom"
Device: pci 0x1693 "NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express"
and WOL is reported as enabled via ethtool
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: g
Never found reason to test it though.
On 2014-02-13 03:06, deano ferrari wrote:
>
> Never found reason to test it though.
Mine says (laptop):
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
Supports Wake-on: pumbg
Wake-on: g
But I never tried it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
I’m totally with you about “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. 3-4 months ago I switched from 11.2 to 13.1 (because I bought a SSD and wanted good support of its features).
I regularly, but seldom, used WOL under 11.2; only this week did I try WOL under 13.1 and found it was broken. That’s why I stumbled upon your thread today, among others.
I turns out that “sudo ethtool -s eth0 wol g” did the trick (I probably had to do it under 11.2 when I started using WOL, but forgot in the meantime).
So here are a few thoughts: