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Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand (2023)

dgross.ca

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Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand (2023)

#21

Post by neilv »

drnick1 wrote: post #12

All this complexity to save a few bucks per year on your electricity bill? This is ridiculous, the Pi costs far more than what you can be expected to save.

I think it turned out a lot more complicated than the author expected, but that their solution they kindly wrote up will be pragmatic for someone.

(For example, imagine a big home GPU server that is needed only intermittently, and you want it to spin up automatically on network traffic from family's various devices that you can't modify.)

Of course, if you have simpler needs, and you're willing to send a WOL magic packet from the using devices, you can do in a few lines of shell script. It's a 1-line ssh-to-something-that-can-etherwake-on-that-vlan script, then wait in a loop for the service you need to appear, then 1-line ssh-to-server-to-shutdown when you're done.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand (2023)

#22

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

BizarroLand wrote: post #20
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #4

Have you measured the power consumption of your "high power consumption" server?

My home server setup when running at full tilt consumes approx 160 watts iirc. I'd love it if I could turn off my systems for when I really need them.

Do you usually run it full tilt? What's it typically using on average? I've forgotten how much mine averages, I only remember being surprised how little it sips because it's mostly idle.

It's surprising because reddit (and HN) would make you think you're throwing away tons of money unless you go with some tiny ARM board and that's not true.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand (2023)

#24

Post by nodesocket »

While not Linux I have my Windows 11 rackmount gaming server sleep after 30 minutes but wake every morning at 8am for backups using WakeupOnStandBy which works great. I tried using built-in Windows task scheduler but it never worked correctly.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand (2023)

#26

Post by bongodongobob »

esseph wrote: post #16
drnick1 wrote: post #12

All this complexity to save a few bucks per year on your electricity bill? This is ridiculous, the Pi costs far more than what you can be expected to save.

Are you a programmer by chance? Some are, and they enjoy it! I know a lot of sysadmins / platform engineer types. A lot of them really enjoy the mix of hardware and software integration challenges.

I don't know any sysadmins who would do this. Task scheduler for Windows or rtcwake for Linux. We try to reduce complexity with existing battle tested tools, not create whatever this is. This is definitely not the easy way.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand (2023)

#28

Post by sneak »

Seems to me that if you want to waste time and money engineering your setup more net efficient, just buy a few solar panels and LiFePo4 batteries to buffer. You can run other stuff off of it, too.

I always choose “make more money” over “pinch pennies”.

Re: Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand (2023)

#30

Post by shellwizard »

jeffbee wrote: post #9
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #4

Have you measured the power consumption of your "high power consumption" server?

Seriously. You can get running states around 1W these days.

Are you talking about processor's C-states? My old 6th gen i3 stays most of the time idling around C8, averaging 5w, really impressive, I suppose newer gens will be even more efficient
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