This is a web based power controller for computer on a local network. It uses the Wake On Lan (WOL) standard to turn on devices remotely, and bash scripts to turn them off. It'd only work with devices that support WOL and the execution of commands over SSH (typically UNIX based systems).
Wol Control makes heavy use of WOL, a C program written by timofurrer, to send wol magic over the network.
DO NOT use this on a production enviroment or anywhere security is a big concern. I wrote this application with the sole porpuse of running it on an isolated network with some media servers on it. This software comes with no warranty, so use it at your own discretion.
Although it is possible to install Wol Control on non Linux systems, it's recommened you install it on one, specially on one that supports systemd. And while its not necessary, I'd personally recommend you set it up on a single board computer such as a raspberry pi, just so it could always stay on, and not consume too much power.
Also, I recommend you create a separate user for Wol Control and clone this repository in its home directory, as it makes this process a bit easier/faster.
Before setting up Wol Control you'll need the following dependencies to use it:
- python3
- pip (python3)
- WOL
- git
- nginx
First, you'd need to clone this repository on the server where you'd like to install it. You can do so by using the following command:
git clone https://github.com/TheLastBilly/wol_control
If you'd like to skip out the rest of the setup process, you can use the setup.sh script to install Wol Control on you current machine. Since it's pretty much a quick hack I made so I wouldn't have to type many commands everytime I wanted to test it on a new system, keep in mind it might not work properly.
Now that the repository is cloned, the next thing you'd like to do is to install virtualenv using pip. We're using a virtual enviroment for Wol Control to avoid conflicts with currently installed modules on your machine. You can skip this part if you want, but I don't recommend it.
python3 -m pip install --user virtualenv
This will install virtualenv for your current user (no need for sudo).
Next you'll have to create a python virtual enviroment and install all the necessary python dependencies on it. In order to do so, use the following commands:
Make sure to move to the repository's directory first.
python3 -m virtualenv ~/.wol_control_env
This command will create a virtual enviroment on your home directory (~/) named wol_control_env. The . is used to make this a hidden folder so you wouldn't normaly see it unless you actively look for it. Regardless, you can name it however you want.
source ~/.wol_control_env/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
The first command will active your virtual enviroment and the second one will install all of the dependencies listed on the requirements.txt file.
Now that all the necessary depencencies have been installed, you can now setup Wol Control's database, create new users and add devices.
First things first, intialize a new database using the init_db.py script:
python3 init_db.py
Create a new user and add some devices using the manage_users.py and manage_devices.py scripts respectively:
python3 manage_users.py
python3 manage_devices.py
And finally, go to the wol_control/main.py file and set the remote_user variable to the username that you'll use to shutdown remote computers with over SSH (more on that later).
Wol Control uses nginx to handle remote resquests from its clients. Assuming you already setup nginx, you'll then have to create a settings file so Wol Control can be accessed by it.
There's a file inluded in this repository, wol_control.nginx, which you can use as a template for that:
server {
listen localhost:9090;
location / {
proxy_set_header Host $host:9090;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name;
proxy_pass http://unix:/home/sammy/wol_control/wol_control.sock:/;
}
}
Just replace the path in between proxy_pass http://unix: and /wol_control.sock:/ with the local path of this repository in your computer. Also, make sure to change the address that nginx will be listening to in the listen line at the beggining of the file from localhost to your machine's hostname/ip.
Now you can copy the wol_control.nginx file into your nginx /etc/nginx/sites-available/ folder and enable it.
sudo cp ./wol_control.nginx /etc/nginx/sites-available/wol_control.nginx
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wol_control.nginx /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/wol_control.nginx
Finally, we can check our nginx configuration file with the following command:
sudo nginx -t
And if everything is alright, restart nginx:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
You'll have to setup a service file for Wol Control. There's already one provided with this repository wol_control.service, so you can use it as a template.
[Unit]
Description=Gunicorn service of wol_control
After=network.target
[Service]
User=sammy
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/sammy/wol_control
Environment="PATH=/home/sammy/.wol_control_env/bin:/usr/bin"
ExecStart=/home/sammy/.wol_control_env/bin/gunicorn --workers 3 --access-logfile wol_control.log --bind unix:wol_control.sock -m 007 wsgi
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
This file assumes that you installed a virtual enviroment on ~/.wol_control_env, so make sure you change that path with whatever directory you used on that step, or remove the use of a virtual enviroment from the file altogether. If you do remove any mentions of a virtual enviroment, your service file should end up looking like this:
[Unit]
Description=Gunicorn service of wol_control
After=network.target
[Service]
User=sammy
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/sammy/wol_control
Environment="/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 -m gunicorn --workers 3 --access-logfile wol_control.log --bind unix:wol_control.sock -m 007 wsgi
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Just like with the nginx setup step, replace the path specified after the WorkingDirectory variable with the path where you clonned this repository into. Also make sure to replace the sammy user in the User variable with username of the user that has access to this repository.
Then, copy the wol_control.service file to the /etc/systemd/system folder and reload the systemd daemon.
sudo cp ./wol_control.service /etc/systemd/system/wol_control.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
And finally, start the wol_control service and enable.
sudo systemctl start wol_control
sudo systemctl enable wol_control
You should now be able to access Wol Control from your local network.
You can do so by accessing the following address from your browser:
http://[Your Server's Address]:9090
[Your Server's Address] is the address that you used in the nginx's listen line.
If you used a virtual enviroment to install Wol Control, you'll probably need to activate it before using any of the included python scripts in this repository.
You can create and delte users by using the manage_users.py script:
python3 manage_users.py
You can create and delte users by using the manage_devices.py script:
python3 manage_devices.py
In orther to properly setup a device, you'll need to enable Wake On Lan on it first. This may vary from device to device, but for most computers in can be enabled from a menu option on their BIOS menu.
This is only supported on Unix based systems
Assuming the machine where Wol Control is running is Machine A and the one that you'd like to shut down remotely is Machine B, follow these steps:
First, create an user on Machine B with the same username that you used on the remote_user variable from the wol_control/main.py file back at the Wol Control setup step.
Then, add the SSH key from the user running Wol Control on Machine A into the newly created user on Machine B:
If you don't have a SSH key setup on Machine A, you can do so by using the ssh-keygen command on it.
On Machine A (Wol Control User)
ssh-copy-id [Machine B's user]@[Machine B's IP]
Make sure to log into Machine B from Machine A at least once, otherwise the Turn Off feature might not work. You can do that by using the following command: ssh [Machine B's user]@[Machine B's IP] on Machine A.
Lastly, create a folder named .wol_control/ on Machine B's user's home directory and then create a file named ~/.wol_control/remote_shutdown.sh. Here you'll add the command that will shutdown Machine B whenever you click the Turn Off button on Wol Control's interface. I personally just use poweroff but this may not work depending on your system:
On Machine B
mkdir ~/.wol_control
echo "poweroff" > ~/.wol_control/remote_shutdown.sh