When using the Atheros alx driver on Ubuntu 20.04 the Wake On Lan
feature is functional as long as a kernel 5.14 is used.
When switching to kernel 5.15 or newer the wol functionality is not
available anymore. Also using a newer Ubuntu version don't contain a
functional WOL with that ethernet interface.
This package adds the support for wol again as dkms package.
Version 3.1 contains new patches. With these the issue with Wake feature
configured to d is fixed since kernel version 6.5.
Version 3.0 has been successfully tested on: Debian, Ubuntu, Proxmox, Fedora, Arch and Suse!
It is expected that the kernel got compiled with gcc. As tool for initrd createion there has to be either mkinitcpio, update-initramfs or dracut.
Please take care to check the requirements based on the explanations about usage with different distributions.
I was using an Ubuntu 20.04 on a home server containing the Atheros ethernet chip. I configured it for Wake On Lan a long time ago and with one ubuntu update the functionality was gone.
This was the change from kernel v5.14 to kernel v5.15.
That problem lead to the motivation to bring wol to life again. I checked the basis where wol was removed from the alx driver on kernel.org and created a patch to bring it in again.
With the next kernel update of Ubuntu I decided to get the compilation of the module done automatically. Here my journey into dkms started.
Now I released version 3.0 of alx-wol.
And to be honest: this is much more than alx driver with wake on lan. This version is a framework for creating kernel modules based on original kernel sources. It automatically detects the kernel version and the compiler used for the kernel. Then it downloads the original kernel sources, applies configurable patches and builds. And last but not least it takes care to bring the module into the initramfs.
The alx-wol can be seen as one example for that mechanism. There are two more examples which can be found in 'other_examples'.
alx-wol 3.0 has been tested on Debian 12 (Bookworm), Ubuntu 24.4 (Noble Numbat), Proxmox VE 8.3-1, Fedora 41-1.4, Arch 2025-02-01 and Suse Leap 15.6.
- take care to fulfill the distribution related requirements (see below)
- clone the git repository
- cd into alx-wol
- execute as root ./install.sh
you may use sudo for the execution
Before doing the installation on a Debian system please install dkms and wget.
sudo apt install dkms wget
The installation requires dkms to be installed.
sudo apt install dkms
If you want to install a kernel from the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA you need to know that Ubuntu may use different compilers for those kernel. Either check in advance if the compilers you have installed are able to compile the module or - in the case compilation crashes - check the log which is mentioned by the installation process for the missing compiler.
As example I can tell the Ubuntu 24.04.5 standard kernel is compiled with gcc-13 while the mainline kernel 6.12 is compiled with gcc-14. New compiler parameter are used, therefore the compilation fails. Checking the log file points to different compiler used.
After this finding you can install the required compiler (in that case `sudo apt install gcc-14) and the module will be compiled and installed.
To be able to install alx-wol on a Proxmos system dkms and the matching linux headers have to be installed.
sudo apt install dkms proxmox-headers-$(uname -r)
I didn't check the Proxmox update mechanisms. Because of this a kernel update should be carefully checked as I don't know if the headers are updated together with the kernel. For me it is a bit strange that the installation of dkms doesn't lead to the linux headers matching to the current kernel.
There are multiple possibilities to install an Arch linux system. Any of these requires dkms, wget, which and linux-headers to be installed.
pacman -S dkms wget which linux-headers
I didn't check the regular Arch update mechanism. Please check the logs when Arch does a kernel update.
On Fedora systems dkms has to be installed before alx-wol installation.
I faced some issues when doing the installation while the system didn't finish the update process. Therefor please FIRST do an upgrade, then execute a reboot and after that install dkms and do the alx-wol installation.
sudo yum upgrade
sudo reboot (or execute a manual reboot)
sudo yum install dkms
I didn't check the regular Fedora update mechanism. Please check the logs when Fedora does a kernel update.
The default Suse installation doesn't contain patch, so additionally to dkms patch has to be installed, too.
On Suse, comparable to Fedora, I faced issues when doing the installation without a complete update in advance.
sudo zypper update
sudo reboot (or execute a manual reboot)
sudo zypper install dkms path
I didn't check the regular Suse update mechanism. Please check the logs when Suse does a kernel update.
Calling the script remove.sh will remove all installed versions of
this package from dkms. Only the installed data will be removed, the
sources are not removed with the script.
To check if there are remaining artefacts call
dkms status
If there are packages with the matching name but not 'installed' at the end of the line there are some artifacts which should be removed. To do so use
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dkms/<package_name>/<package_version>
If you also want to remove the original sources use
sudo rm -rf /usr/src/<package_name>-<package_version>
Caution! There is a minus between the package name and the version, NOT a slash as in the previous command!
This is a list of issues found in the Ubuntu world leading to large effort in alx-wol:
- different compilers used
there have been kernels which required a newer compiler than the one which was installed
Solution: since alx-wol version 2.0 the system tries to find the optimum compiler automatically - changes in dkms system
a newer dkms system doesn't detect differences in modules if the value of MODULE_VERSION doesn't differ
In case of alx it's even one step worse:
these sources don't contain that define
Solution: MODULE_VERSION is automatically patched and now contains a time stamp - changes in dkms system
when starting this project Ubuntus dkms system supported the feature REMAKE_INITRD
Since a newer version of Ubuntu the dkms reported this as depricated
Solution: own scripting around initramfs handling - different libc versions used
Starting with a kernel 6.4.something in the kernel ppa Ubuntu used a newer version of glibc to build the kernel
No solution for alx-wol - but the whole kernel can't be used on older Ubuntu systems
Solution is to use the regular updates for these systems, not the PPA kernels - changes in initramfs handling
since Ubuntu 23.04 Ubuntu changes to a new update-initramfs mechanism
With this mechanism no dkms build module is installed in the initramfs anymore
Solution: since version 2.0 there is an additional hook for mkinitramfs
This hook installs all dkms build modules into the initramfs
The new generic kernel module patch mechanism is explained here
Only kernel before 6.5:
There is an issue when setting the Wake-on feature to d. If this is done
the ethernet interface doesn't come up after system wakes up after a suspend.
To recover from this there are two possibilities:
- execute a reboot
- execute the following sequence:
sudo rmmod alx
sudo insmod $(find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/ -name 'alx.*' | grep -v /kernel/)
Version 3.1
New patches. These patches fix the 'Wake on lan disabled' issue since kernel 6.5
Version 3.0
Change kernel version and compiler used detection. With this the mechanism should work on nearly any distribution.
Version 2.1.2
First try to add Arch Linux support
Version 2.1.1
First try to add Proxmox support
Version 2.1
Introduction of mechanism to integrate other distributions than Ubuntu. First other distribution implemented: Debian.
Version 2.0
Introduction of generic kernel module patching mechanism
The patch mechanism supports falling back to defined patches
As long as these apply there should be no need to change anything in
alx-wol
First version which is able to handle update-initramfs on Ubuntu 23.10
Added documentation for the generic mechanism
Version 1.5
Introduced support for Kernel 6.5
Because of a change in update-initramfs this doesn't work on Ubuntu
23.10
Version 1.4.1
Workaround for missing dependency in 6.4.6 kernel package in ubuntu
Package expects to find gcc-13 but there is no dependency
Version 1.4
bugfix on installation of newer version of alx-wol
intruduction of support for kernel 6.4
Version 1.3
First full functional version
Supports Kernel 5.15 - 5.19, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3
Deinstallation of previous versions doesn't work correctly.
This package is provides AS IS.
Use it on your own risk.
The author doesn't take any responsibility for any kind of malfunction
or data loss on your system.