Remote cold boot Mac

Question

As long as Wake for network access is checked off, I was wondering if there is a way to remotely boot up a Mac computer. Say your Mac is fully shut down, you're off somewhere and want to use Back To My Mac to log in remotely but you can't because your Mac is off. Is there a way that you can remotely boot it and then use Back To My Mac to take care of the rest?

Solution

This is what WakeOnLAN was designed for, to remotely turn on a computer. This is what you want to do, right? It doesn't what sleep state a machine is in, WakeOnLAN will turn it on. To use it across the internet, you want to set up some type of VPN on your network to connect to before using it, or else there is a BIG security hole.

Comments

[MDMoore313]

apple.stackexchange.com/questions/26906/…

[TheCodingArt]

This is not what I'm looking for. I'm not looking to wake a sleeping computer. I'm looking to wake up from a cold boot aka after hitting the shutdown button. I know it's been done on PCs.

[TheCodingArt]

To my understanding and from digging into this, it just enables you to wake up a Mac that's in sleep mode.

[MDMoore313]

@TheGamingArt that's half correct: The full specification allows a computer to be waken up from any state of sleep, there are multiple sleep states a computer can be in. This is possible because the network port on the computer stays awake, listening to network traffic, and if it gets the magic combination, it will turn the computer on, or wake it up, it's all the same. Wiki Page

[heiglandreas]

As far as I know WakeOnLan only works when the computer is in some kind of sleep mode. But as @TheGamingArt described the remote machine is off. Which means, no WakeOnLan. So the only ways to power up a completely turned off mac are either LOM (which is not available) or the method I described using an IP-Powerswitch to give power to the mac to start it via the build in "restart after powerlos" which works even when the machine has been shutdown correctly and power is switched off/switched on.

[MDMoore313]

WakeOnLAN can be used when the machine is off, as long as the BIOS supports it. This is googlable. There are multiple sleep modes, powered off being one of them.

[TheCodingArt]

This is something I'll have to dig more into obviously. Everything I saw WakeOnLAN, when waking from (with clarification) a computer being completely shut off while the network card is left in a wake mode, was not possible on a Mac. Then again, I have not tried it yet which I will this coming weekend. An IP Powerswitch is the method I've seen floating around, but it's really not feasibly worth it in my opinion. I was a straight packet shot to boot it up. I'll report what I find back. Thank you guys for the feed back though and please let me know if there are any better ideas.

[TheCodingArt]

There is a big difference between a NIC Wake mode when a computer is shut down and a computer being a SLEEP. Also, the application mentioned for WakeOnLan was discontinued (per the link you provided and their official site). I did manage to try out DipicusWakeOnLan, but this also failed using wireless Mac information and such. My iMac does support Wake for network access and Wake On Wireless. Otherwise (because of Apple's lack of specitivity) the wake features may only be actually listening for packets during the iMac's LITERAL 'sleep' mode rather being fully shut down.

[TheCodingArt]

Also, the VPN access is my iCloud account through my Time Capsule.

[MDMoore313]

@TheGamingArt If Macs don't implement the full spec (or hide it using their bonjour sleep proxy) then that's a different story. However, this link looks promising for what you want, and also can wake a machine up in sleep or shutdown state, as long as it's connected to a power supplied ethernet port. Wireless is a different matter, you're better off trying it with ethernet, as least the first time around.

[TheCodingArt]

Well, unfortunately this is a product that costs and I'm really not willing to cough up the money unless I know it legitimately does what I would like it to do. I have read mixed reviews on this product which don't strengthen the argument that it will in fact work.

[Canadian Luke]

@MDMoore313, there is no BIOS, at least in contemporary Macs. When it comes to WOL, ahhhh, it's great to be a PC. :P - NomDeGuerre