Take the 2-minute tour ×

I have a stack of Apple Mac minis running SSH servers for remote login. The problem is that I can't seem to get them to wake up. From what I gathered, as of Mac OSX 10.7 you required to have a boot time option set - darkwake=0 10.7 and darkwake=no 10.8. So I tried this and then I came to the realization that this will probably work for a wired connection but I'm using WiFi.

My wired connections are used for another local subnet without Internet access, so I have to get it to wake on WiFi.

I realize that I can just set the stack of Mac minis to just not sleep, but I'm looking for a sleep enabled option. These services don't require initial response speed as once the connection is made they will be active and once they are no longer active they will hopefully go back to sleep.

I have a FreeBSD box running avahi-daemon in order to try and wake the Macs with the Bonjour Service but it doesn't seem to work. I tried registering the service as Gordon suggested in the below post, but that just makes it so that there isn't a timeout when discovering services and resolving them. It still doesn't allow ssh connections to port 22 when it's asleep.

For reference, I want what seems like what Gordon Davisson explained on this question:

Wake on Demand for Apache server in OS X 10.8

share|improve this question
The merits of using Mac Minis as servers may be outside the scope of this question, but one thing is certain: stacks of servers and wireless networking don't mix in anything resembling a good way. –  Skyhawk Nov 27 '12 at 23:09
This is known in the trade as "Doing it Wrong". Don't use wireless for this. What you want to do will work fine over wired LAN. Probably. –  Tom O'Connor Nov 28 '12 at 0:13
add comment

1 Answer

I haven't needed to resort to pmset to get Mac hardware to wake reliably over Wi-Fi but I do generally insist on an Airport router to do the waking. Even when I have other Wi-Fi for the network due to management issues, better enterprise software support, whatever - I drop an AirPort express in bridge mode and pick a decent channel to reach the Mac that need a wireless WOL.

You can observe each network interface in System Information to ensure it's set to wake by looking just below the green section on Channels Wi-Fi Locale, Country Code and Supported Channels

Yes, is you use a wired ethernet connection, it seems to not need two attempts to occasionally wake a sleeping mac, but the extra cost for a NIC adapter and wiring hasn't paid off for me in increasing the reliability of waking. I do pay the cost for an Apple base station if I can't get the chosen wireless vendor to support me in a deployment and agree they will support wireless WOL issues if we encounter them.

Since the packet is pretty basic the chances of you setting up your FreeBSD box incorrectly is low and the chance your network isn't delivering the packet seems high - especially if the Macs work reliably with the network once awoken.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


