wol-sleep-pc_skill

Overview

This skill provides two small Python scripts to send Wake-on-LAN (WOL) and Sleep-on-LAN (SOL) magic packets to a specific PC on your local LAN. Defaults are intentionally zeroed; configure the target MAC, inverted MAC (for sleep), broadcast address, and port via CLI flags or a local config file. It is lightweight, deterministic, and designed to be run directly when you need to wake or put a machine to sleep.

How this skill works

send_wol.py constructs and broadcasts a standard WOL magic packet (6 bytes of 0xFF followed by 16 repetitions of the target MAC). send_sleep.py sends a SOL packet that uses the inverted MAC bytes pattern expected by some NICs for sleep commands. Both scripts read settings from ~/.config/wol-sleep-pc/config.json if present; any CLI flags override the config. Scripts use UDP broadcast on the configured port and require permission to send broadcast packets.

When to use it

• When you want to wake a machine on the same Ethernet/LAN segment using its MAC address.
• When you need to trigger a sleep (SOL) command that some NICs support via inverted-MAC packets.
• When running from a host on the same L2 network or when you can supply the correct broadcast address for the target segment.
• When you prefer a simple, tested script to send WOL/SOL instead of generating packets ad hoc.

Best practices

• Store target MAC, inverted sleep MAC, broadcast address, and port in ~/.config/wol-sleep-pc/config.json and keep that file out of version control.
• Verify the broadcast address matches the target’s subnet and that your runtime host has L2 connectivity to the target.
• Run the scripts with Python 3 and ensure the process has rights to send UDP broadcasts.
• Test WOL/SOL on a known device first to confirm NIC/BIOS firmware supports the chosen packet type and port.

Example use cases

• Wake a home lab server from a laptop on the same Wi‑Fi subnet using send_wol.py with your server MAC and subnet broadcast.
• Put a workstation to sleep remotely by sending the inverted MAC with send_sleep.py when the OS supports SOL.
• Automate a scheduled wake for backups by calling send_wol.py from a cron job on a local gateway.
• Update or inspect local WOL/SOL configuration values by editing the config.json and testing with the scripts.