Auto Power On and Off

Question

I have a old laptop set up as a media server with Ubuntu 12.04 on it. I was wondering whether it was possible to set a time for it to automatically turn off at night and then in the morning automatically turn on. I know the auto off is possible using Ktimer but I do not know how to set an auto on time...

If this is not possible, I guess the next best thing would be to have it go into suspend and then somehow set a time for it to wake up...

Thanks for the help,

Leinardo

Solution

Most computers have a setting in the BIOS to turn on the computer by various means, including time and date. I used to always have my computer come on at a certain time every day before I came home from work, and I had backups scheduled for this time.

This worked even if the computer was totally turned off, not on standby. Of course, it had to have power available (it was a desktop).

It's pretty hard to give exact directions, because it depends on computer and BIOS. But you need to press the secret key while booting to get into the BIOS, then poke around to find the power settings.

Turning off is, as you've said, done by various software, including cron.

Comments

[LeinardoSmtih]

So... are there any other options if I do not have an option like that in my bios?

[Deepak Verma]

I'm mainly a desktop user, but I've seen options in some programs to wake up the system to perform some action, so I assume that if you suspend rather than turn off, there is a way. I don't know offhand, though. By the way, what you're looking for is "wake on RTC" (real-time clock).