So I decided to upgrade the GL-RM1 kvm to the latest firmware (1.8.1.release1) remotely because I like to live dangerously.
The kvm is connected to a macbook, in another country, with the lid closed. What could possibly go wrong? Firmware upgrade starts, completes, kvm comes back online. And the macbook? Gone. Unreachable. Probably went to sleep while the kvm was restarting.
Alright, no panic, I will try to wake it up with wake-on-lan, which I had previously enabled on the macbook. Nothing.. Both network interfaces on the mac, wifi (192.168.0.12) and ethernet (192.168.0.15) won’t respond to wake-on-lan sent by the kvm. No HDMI signal coming from the macbook. Probably still sleeping.
Alright, it’s over, panic starts to grow. Then I looked again at the device list in the kvm, and noticed a mysterious IP, 192.168.0.117. No hostname, no eplaination, just there. It cannot be the kvm itself, because it is has IP 192.168.0.120.
So I said, why not, I sent the wake-on-lan command to this IP and boom, the macbook woke up, everything was back to normal. So I am a bit confused, where this IP 192.168.0.117 comes from? Am I missing something about wake-on-lan functionality?
“Then I looked again at the device list in the kvm, and noticed a mysterious IP, 192.168.0.117.”
Can you post a screenshot of what you are seeing? What mac address does said ip have? Does it match the mac address of the macbook or no?
Does the macbook wifi card support WOL in the first place? Its been my experience that is only a limited wifi cards out there that do
If you are relying on the kvm for remote access, I would say avoid beta software. Also I noticed that after I updated to beta 2, it took a couple of minutes for my hdmi on my mac mini to kick on the screen.
Another potential is that the MAC associated with .117 is a hardwired port (maybe a USB dongle?). As mentioned above, most WiFi interfaces don't support WoL because they disconnect on shutdown.
It's useful when you're local to the device to make sure things work as intended, shutdown the laptop and make sure it powers back up again via the Comet WoL feature.
The MAC and IP addresses match for both the wifi and Ethernet in the device list provided by the kvm. The mysterious IP 192.168.0.117 has a different MAC. I think the macbook allows wake on LAN because I enabled it ( Share your Mac resources when it’s in sleep - Apple Support )
It could be that it took some time for the HDMI signal to become active, although it doesn’t explain the extra IP address.
I do have a USB dongle that connects the ethernet cable and hdmi to the usbc of the mac. How can I check the mac of the dongle though
networksetup -listallhardwareports shows some MAC addresses but none matches the MAC of that IP. I start to believe that it was just the delay of the HDMI signal after KVM upgrade. I will do some tests when I come back. This extra IP could be a random device connected to the LAN, the router says it is a wifi network interface, maybe flatmates. Anyway, thank you all for the support and ideas!