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How to remotely power on the Mac Mini (Wake-on-LAN)

Hi all,


I just bought the 4GB 2011 Mac Mini to use for a home theater PC. So far it has been ok but I'm trying to figure out how to get wake-on-LAN to work on this thing. I can remotely wake it up from sleep over wifi but what about if it is shut off? There must be a way or else I would say it is a serious flaw. I plan to keep it in my entertainment system. If it only works over ethernet that would be fine (haven't tested it yet) but I would prefer remote wake from wifi or even infrared wake from a remote would be ok too.


Thanks,

Al

Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Nov 21, 2011 6:28 PM

Reply
10 replies

Nov 22, 2011 5:22 AM in response to techguy817

As the name says, this feature is to wake computers on a LAN, this means the computer has to be asleep, not shutdown. If it is shutdown it is not sleeping and therefore cannot be woken.


If it is any help you can set the Mac to shutdown and startup according to a schedule, this is configured in Energy Saver settings in System Preferences. You could then have it start up at a specific time, allow it to go to sleep, wake it over the LAN, but it would then later shutdown.

Nov 22, 2011 8:23 AM in response to John Lockwood

Thanks for the reply John. I have used wake on LAN many times with PCs when they are completely shutdown and not suspended or in standby mode. The WoL standard should work this way as far as I know. http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-008459.htm and other sites provide the details. I assume Apple may implement partial wake on LAN or not the full standard then.


I know I can startup the system according to a schedule but I don't want to waste power and potentially shorten the life of the drives and hardware. I think somewhere else it mentioned that you can turn it on by toggling a power strip for the system if enabling a certain reboot option.

Nov 22, 2011 8:40 AM in response to techguy817

When the Mac mini is asleep the hard drives are completely powered down, even in full normal use a Mac mini uses compared to most other PCs very little power and when asleep it uses hardly any at all.


You can see Apple's webpage on the subject of power consumption for the Mac mini here http://www.apple.com/macmini/environment.html and a more detailed report showing it only uses a platry 1.16 watts when asleep here http://images.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/MacMini_PER_20110720.pdf

Sep 23, 2012 10:23 AM in response to techguy817

Any updates on this? Cannot believe Apple is not enabling full fledged WoL - my iMac spins up the hard drive once an hour for no apparent reason and that is why I don't want it just asleep as I have it in my bedroom; it is annoying during the night (as it wakes me up too!)... I had no problem waking up my old IBM PC either that was fully powered off as it kept power to the NIC - Link LED was always on. There has to be a way to enable this in BIOS/UEFI or in the OS - or is the hardware simply not 100% WoL compiant?

Jan 6, 2013 12:46 AM in response to magnusfromarlington

Hello!!!


2 days ago I was trying to compare the settings of my MacBook Pro (which wakes on lan without any issue) with the settings of my iMac (which disconnects from the network after something like 6 hours of sleep).


I was thinking it should be something related about how the Mac handle the sleep and how it reacts during the sleep mode. In the preferences, I've noticed that my MacBook Pro uses hibernate mode 3, my iMac uses hibernate mode 0.


So, I changed the hibernate mode to 3 on my iMac. And over 12 hours of sleep I was able to wake it up without any issue. At the same time, I changed the hibernate mode on my MacBook Pro to 0. Guess what? It reacts like the iMac now, it disconnects from the network after 6 hours of sleep.


To change your hibernate mode type in terminal:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3


If you want more information about hibernate modes, here's the link

http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/sleepmode.html


I'll inform you if the problem comes back.

Aug 7, 2013 2:37 PM in response to techguy817

As I understand it, Apple implemented "Wake on Demand" in Snow Leopard which wakes a Mac from sleep when a Bonjour service (mDNS) is accessed. This works fine in my case, but it does conflict with WOL "Wake on LAN". Wake on Demand works fine for most cases, but I would like to be able to turn the Mac back on over the LAN if the Mac powers itself off for say an UPS trigger. I would like to be able to do both, but seem to be able to make only one or the other work.

Oct 2, 2014 11:17 AM in response to agent-p

I realize this is an old discussion but it's one of the top search results for this topic.


Apple does not currently support Wake-on-lan from the S5 state (powered off but still plugged in) for Macintoshes.

It does support WOL for S3 and S4 states (Sleep and Hibernation) That's the state where the computer is powered off, but still plugged in, with a very small amount of power being used.

How to remotely power on the Mac Mini (Wake-on-LAN)

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