---
name: "ether-wake"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "etherwake"
version: "1.06-2"
release: "Debian 3.0 (Woody)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/ether-wake"
---

# ether-wake(8)

A little tools to send magic WOL packages

## NAME

etherwake - A little tools to send magic WOL packages

## SYNOPSIS

**etherwake** \[*options*\] *MAC-Address*

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the **etherwake** commands.

**etherwake** is a program that generates and transmits Wake-On-LAN  (WOL) "Magic Packet", used for restarting machines that have been soft-powered-down (ACPI D3-warm state). It currently generates the standard AMD Magic Packet format, with an optinonal password appended.

## OPTIONS

**etherwake** needs a single dash ('-') in front of the option. A summary of options is included below.

- **-u**

  A short help

- **-h**

  A longer help. Like this manpage.

- **-b**

  Send wake-up packet to the broadcast address.

- **-D**

  Increase the Debug Level.

- **-i ifname**

  Use interface ifname instead of the default "eth0".

- **-p passwd**

  Append a four or six byte password to the packet. Only very few adapters need or support this. The password may be also specified in ethernet hex format (00:22:44:66:88:aa) or dotted decimal (192.168.1.1).

## SEE ALSO

[**arp**(8)](/arp/8.md).\

## KNOWN BUGS

On some systems dropping root capability allows the process to be dumped, traced or debugged. If someone traces this program, they get control of a raw socket. Linux handles this safely, but beware when porting this program.

## AUTHOR

ether-wake was written by Donald Becker \<becker@scyld.com\>. This manual page was written by Alain Schroeder \<alain@parkautomat.net\>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Most of this documentation was extracted of Donald's well documented  source.