I already said I was sorry

log/the_magic_of_wake_on_lan-19-12-2024.txt

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+> DATE: Thu 19 Dec 2024 18:35 By: konsthol@pm.me
+
+# The magic of Wake-On-LAN
+
+Years ago, some good friends of mine gifted me a Raspberry Pi 4 with 
+2GB of RAM for my birthday. It’s hands down the most thoughtful 
+gift I’ve ever received, perfectly matching my hobbies. They were 
+lucky to even find one during the chip shortage! I initially used it 
+as a VPN server with WireGuard and played around with Pi-hole for 
+network-wide ad blocking.
+
+Eventually, I got into cloud computing and started hosting multiple 
+services on a VPS I rent from MVPS. This VPS, with its 4GB of RAM, 
+currently runs several of my daily-use services like Gitea, Searx, 
+NTFY, and more. Although the Raspberry Pi could theoretically handle 
+these services, its 2GB of RAM limited simultaneous operations.
+
+One day, it hit me: why not use the Raspberry Pi for a simpler 
+project like a Wake-On-LAN (WOL) server? It requires minimal 
+resources and just needs to stay on and send WOL packets. The 
+Raspberry Pi is connected via Wi-Fi to the same network as my laptop. 
+Normally, waking up my laptop with WOL would require an Ethernet 
+cable connection to the router, but I connected one end to the Pi and 
+the other to the laptop.
+
+I started with a simple shell script using etherwake, a command-line 
+tool to send WOL packets. After enabling WOL in my laptop’s BIOS 
+and confirming it on the OS using ethtool, I could easily wake my 
+laptop remotely using a Termux shortcut on my phone, which SSHed into 
+the Raspberry Pi to execute the etherwake command.
+
+Though this setup worked perfectly fine, I wanted to make it even 
+better. Initially, the Raspberry Pi only ran SSH and executed a 
+command to wake my laptop. So it wasn't really a WOL server. After 
+some research, I found Flask and created an actual WOL server. This 
+server had routes, authentication, logging, rate limits, and more to 
+ensure robustness and security.
+
+What makes my Flask-based server so cool is its dynamic nature. I can 
+configure a .env file with multiple device MAC addresses, allowing 
+numerous routes for different devices. For instance, I have 
+LAPTOP_MAC="itsmac" and DESKTOP_MAC="itsmac", enabling me to wake 
+them via HTTP requests at /wol/laptop and /wol/desktop, respectively.
+
+One open-source application that fits my use case is HTTP Shortcuts 
+from F-Droid. After configuring a specific route, I can turn it into 
+a widget on my home screen. This way, I can wake my laptop up with 
+just a tap! Plus, I use dynamic DNS, so my Pi is accessible from 
+anywhere.
+
+/images/pic-selected-19-12-24_19-10-42.png The project's mascot
+
+I would suggest anyone to take a look at my project's repo and if 
+they find that it fits their needs, use the setupSingleBinary.sh 
+script to grab the latest executable. The repo is over at
+
+WOL-Ly
+https://git.konsthol.eu/konsthol/WOL-Ly
+
+
+