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

dgross.ca

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

#221

Post by vamega »

nottorp wrote: post #175
manmal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The N100 has a TDP of 6W. I haven't measured power draw of the whole system yet though, I imagine that the mainboard will pull another couple watts at least. It shines especially in scenarios where the Pi is just a tad too slow. E.g. you can't live transcode 4k videos on a Pi, while the N100 has latest UHD graphics and therefore ships with a decent HW-accelerated H265 en/decoder.

There are a lot of low power media boxes but few servers sadly. By server i mean multiple network ports and storage ports, space in the case for several spinny discs in addition to the ssds etc. I doubt any NUC is good for a server by my definition.

Have you seen the board talked about on this thread?

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-nas...

There is a newer board with a J6413/6412 that could also be a candidate if don’t need quite as much processing power.

Reports are that servers with this run under 10W at idle.

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

#223

Post by IshKebab »

0x457 wrote: post #159
IshKebab wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not really such a thing as a "WOL packet" exactly. Basically the network interface accepts any old packet, and then maybe wakes up depending on the content of the packet. You can configure it to wake up if it sees any packet (what he did). The problem is networks are rarely completely silent and your machine will just wake up randomly. Which is why they invented "MagicPacket(tm)" which is just any old packet…

He explained why: he wanted the server to wake just when someone is tried to SSH to it.

Ah yes you are right. I definitely would have done it via some kind of gateway.

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

#224

Post by Aerbil313 »

Gigachad wrote: post #219
oceanplexian wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really worth it, even though I'd commend the OP for wading through the WoL stack. I have a NAS that's running 8 drives and a modern Intel CPU and it runs around 40w from the wall under load, and idles <10W with the drive spun down and CPU not doing anything. The WoL setup made more sense 5-10 years ago when power save functionality was much more primitive and drives were way less efficient.

It's also a solved problem for the vast majority of the population. You pay Apple or Google a few dollars a month and they handle backups for you. Those servers aren't sitting idle 99% of the time waiting for you to backup so there is no wasted power. Self hosting is fun but not the most practical option. And now iCloud has end to end encryption, there is little reason to bother doing it yourself.

> a solved problem

This is only because the vast majority of the population agrees that it’s a reasonable tradeoff to not bother with all the digital privacy and security stuff beyond what the defaults are and just go on with their lives. The reason behind this is that almost no one is significantly negatively affected by not being vigilant and self-hosting everything. The downside is that things like PRISM can exist and nation-states and any sufficiently powerful or skillful interested party can and do far more easily target, surveil and harm any individual they want. Again, those individuals are not your average Joe so the public doesn’t care. As long as you don’t leave the herd and stay in line, you’re safe. Personally, I didn’t give any f… about privacy until I felt there’s a good possibility US agencies can target me, due to things I would start to talk about online. Those things were not illegal neither in US nor in my country, just different ideologies from the status quo of modernity, but I knew for a fact people have been (illegally) arrested by US agencies before due to voicing similar things.[0]

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221203231121/https://muslimske...

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

#226

Post by MezzoDelCammin »

kayge wrote: post #204
TacticalCoder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially since the setup requires a Raspberry Pi to run permanently. Which they'll gladly do no? If (poor quality) SD card corruption is a concern, you can have the RPi mount the SD card read-only or just keep a full backup of the SD card. I've had a RPi 1 power 4 VoIP Cisco phones for years. Zero issue. I've got another one constantly establishing a remote SSH-tunnel so that I can easily troubleshoot my brother,…

Man I loved my RPi remote SSH-tunnel for being able to access my home network from anywhere... until my kid needed a Pi for a robot he got for Christmas and I decided to donate mine to the cause :)

That's exactly the right excuse to buy yourself a second hand mini PC and install proxmox / tailscale on it ; )

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

#227

Post by nottorp »

manmal wrote: post #218
nottorp wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lots of NAS appliances boxes Rather roll my own Linux thank you. > Some of them even have decent networking options. I think few of them have multiple ethernet ports. Plus there's the matter of how much cpu the built in ethernet eats.

> Rather roll my own Linux thank you. Most modern NAS have that option. It just doesn’t make that much sense since that would get rid of the (in some cases really good) DSM.

It does if you want more than a storage appliance. I want the option of setting up any linux server software on it if i feel the need. Just a general purpose low power computer.

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

#228

Post by rpgbr »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #214
SoftTalker wrote: post #105

I just let my computer run all the time. Disable all sleep functionality except monitor sleep. Then it always works when I need it to. My life is way too short to fool around with stuff like this to save $5 in electricity and have to deal with the inevitiable "won't wake up" or "wakes up in a brain-damaged state" situations.

I do this too. I'm on a Mac and use an app called "Amphetamine" to keep the machine active (it's the successor to "Caffeine" IIRC). However, I dim the screen to black when I go to sleep, since it's the only component that can't really "idle" - it's consuming power as long as it's displaying pixels, and thus it would also be the first component to die from overuse even while "idling."

I use a native CLI app for keeping macOS awake:

caffeinate -d

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

#229

Post by alx__ »

SoftTalker wrote: post #105

I just let my computer run all the time. Disable all sleep functionality except monitor sleep. Then it always works when I need it to. My life is way too short to fool around with stuff like this to save $5 in electricity and have to deal with the inevitiable "won't wake up" or "wakes up in a brain-damaged state" situations.

I got the Mac Mini M1, it only needs ~7W when idle and up to 35W at full load. Runs quiet as a mouse

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

#230

Post by nottorp »

vamega wrote: post #221
nottorp wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of low power media boxes but few servers sadly. By server i mean multiple network ports and storage ports, space in the case for several spinny discs in addition to the ssds etc. I doubt any NUC is good for a server by my definition.

Have you seen the board talked about on this thread? https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-nas... There is a newer board with a J6413/6412 that could also be a candidate if don’t need quite as much processing power. Reports are that servers with this run under 10W at idle.

Hmm I don't think I dare. But thanks.
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