Shit you don’t care about (Linux edition).

No, this doesn’t (necessarily) indicate a return from the dead, I’m just doing my part as a responsible internet citizen. You see, I recently switched my web development server from Windows Server 2003 to Ubuntu 6.10. The actual server itself is tucked discretely away underneath my bed, as I just use SSH when I need to make changes on it and thus don’t need a monitor or any of the other typical PC peripherals. Since it’s out of the way, physically turning it on is a hassle and so I’ve always used the wake on lan (WOL) functionality that all modern network adapters have.

However, trying to get this to work in Ubuntu has been nothing short of a nightmare. After about 4 hours and 300 Google searches I finally found an offhand reference to a bug in the forcedeth drivers that was causing all of my misery. In the interest of potentially saving some other poor soul from wasting as much time as I did, here’s the specifics of the bug and how you can resolve it:

If you’re using any motherboard running the nVidia nForce chipset (that includes both nForce2 and nForce4 series) you should be aware that there’s a bug in the forcedeth drivers that Ubuntu – and most other Linux distros – will install. Specifically, when the system halts it stores the MAC address for your network adapter backwards. So, when you try to wake the system later, you have to use this reversed MAC address or it won’t work.

For example, if your system’s MAC address is 01:23:45:67:89:ab you will need to use ab:89:67:45:23:01 to wake it up.

Given that WOL isn’t exactly the most commonly used service I doubt they’re overly concerned about the issue, so keep this in mind if you’re installing Linux on nForce-based hardware.