Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#11

Post by CraigJPerry » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 12:52 PM UTC

oneshtein wrote: post #7

heywire wrote: post #3

Another option, if your needs are relatively modest, is to choose a low power mini PC. The one I chose idles at around 5W under Linux before any tweaking. It is based on the Intel N5105. I have a few 2.5” external HDDs attached for backup which are configured to sleep after a short time.

Another option is to use a smartphone with damaged screen, USB Ethernet card and an external USB drive.

This was always attractive to me, how are you running a linux host on the phone or are you just using native android hosted services?

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#12

Post by throw0101a » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 12:55 PM UTC

The concept of "ARP Stand-in" brought to mind Proxy ARP:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_ARP

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#13

Post by traverseda » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 12:59 PM UTC

oneshtein wrote: post #7

heywire wrote: post #3

Another option, if your needs are relatively modest, is to choose a low power mini PC. The one I chose idles at around 5W under Linux before any tweaking. It is based on the Intel N5105. I have a few 2.5” external HDDs attached for backup which are configured to sleep after a short time.

Another option is to use a smartphone with damaged screen, USB Ethernet card and an external USB drive.

I think you'll be disappointed by the kernel support, especially if you want to run docker containers or anything like that.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#14

Post by prettyStandard » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 1:01 PM UTC

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #4

For the second always-on machine, a router running OpenWRT would be ideal since it would always be up anyways.

My thoughts exactly. This seems to be the killer app for openwrt/ddwrt.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#15

Post by VWWHFSfQ » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

ladyanita22 wrote: post #8

Saying Windows has had it since Windows 98 and then, acknowledging that the issue is wake-on-demand is a bit confusing to say the least. Obviously Linux can sleep easily since decades ago. The issue is wake on demand (and I don't know if Windows has that even) Edit: I don't why everyone's having issues. I run Fedora on a cheap Gigabyte G5KD and never had any problems. Never did with either of my thinkpads or my Xiaom…

> Obviously Linux can sleep easily since decades ago.

Yeah right. Suspend and resume is still buggy as hell. Power management in general in Linux is still awful after all these years.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#16

Post by HankB99 » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

Diagrams are just visible enough that I can tell that they're present but I cannot otherwise see them. I suppose that's because I'm using a dark theme on Firefox.

Not that it matters. There's enough text to figure out what's going on in the first place and it would not help me much in any case.

I have a file server running of an ancient server motherboard from another age. (Supermicro X8SIL w/X3460 and 16GB ECC RAM) It uses just about 95W idle and bumps to about 150W when the drives (5 HDDs) are being scrubbed. I tried suspending the server and power dropped to about 75W - not a huge saving.

Another concern is drive longevity. Starting and stopping repeatedly during the day is a lot harder on them than running continuously and could lead to premature drive failure. I could explore this if my server were SSD based but it is not.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#17

Post by crizzlenizzle » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

> Disable IPv6: this approach relies on ARP, which IPv6 doesn't use

I wish more people would care about IPv6.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#18

Post by no_time » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

I wonder how many sleep/wake cycles would it take a day to outweigh the TCO decrease of the power bill with the TCO increase of the increased stress/amortization of the hardware, especially HDDs.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#19

Post by cmeacham98 » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

HankB99 wrote: post #16

Diagrams are just visible enough that I can tell that they're present but I cannot otherwise see them. I suppose that's because I'm using a dark theme on Firefox. Not that it matters. There's enough text to figure out what's going on in the first place and it would not help me much in any case. I have a file server running of an ancient server motherboard from another age. (Supermicro X8SIL w/X3460 and 16GB ECC RAM)…

I'm not using any dark theme addons or similar, just the standard prefers-color-scheme, and I have the same problem. So they just didn't account for their website's dark mode when writing the article.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand – the simple way

#20

Post by HankB99 » Wed, Apr 19, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

heywire wrote: post #3

Another option, if your needs are relatively modest, is to choose a low power mini PC. The one I chose idles at around 5W under Linux before any tweaking. It is based on the Intel N5105. I have a few 2.5” external HDDs attached for backup which are configured to sleep after a short time.

I'm curious if you have measured power at the well (e.g. smart plug with energy metering or Kill-a-watt.) I just set up a test server with a J1900 (10W TDP.) With 8GB RAM and running from an SSD it uses 25W. Add 4 7200RPM HDDs and it's up to 65W idling.

I have another test server based on a Raspberry Pi 4B. The Pi boots from SD card and uses about 5W. Add 2 drives in a USB drive bay and power for the setup is now up to 25W.