About Helios4 Wake-on-LAN and Fancontrol !

Posted by Kobol Team on March 18, 2019

Wake-on-LAN is now supported

Even though Helios4 has been designed as a headless server that would run 24/7, a feature that has been long awaited it’s the capability to put the system in suspend mode and then wake it up with a trigger send over the network, feature knows as Wake-on-LAN.

We have updated our wiki with a new tutorial on how to setup and use Wake-on-LAN (WoL) on Helios4.

In order to enable the WoL support on your running Helios4, you will first need to upgrade your system to Armbian 5.77.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo reboot

The wiki page covers all the important steps, so read carefully before putting your system in suspend mode and not being able to wake it up remotely :P

Info : We have also published the latest Armbian 5.77 in our download section. This image doesn’t require any configuration for WoL since everything is already enabled by default.

Fancontrol config update

In previous Armbian release, the fancontrol configuration wasn’t well tailored to the new fan type we provided in batch 2.

User reported HDD high temp during idle, due to the fans stop spinning. So it is strongly recommanded to update your fancontrol with the following configuration to always make the fan run at low speed even when system is idle.

1) Open fancontrol configuration

sudo nano /etc/fancontrol

2) Replace the configuration with the following config

# Helios4 PWM Fan Control Configuration
# Temp source : /dev/thermal-cpu
INTERVAL=10
FCTEMPS=/dev/fan-j10/pwm1=/dev/thermal-cpu/temp1_input /dev/fan-j17/pwm1=/dev/thermal-cpu/temp1_input
MINTEMP=/dev/fan-j10/pwm1=60 /dev/fan-j17/pwm1=60
MAXTEMP=/dev/fan-j10/pwm1=80 /dev/fan-j17/pwm1=80
MINSTART=/dev/fan-j10/pwm1=20 /dev/fan-j17/pwm1=20
MINSTOP=/dev/fan-j10/pwm1=29 /dev/fan-j17/pwm1=29
MINPWM=20

3) Restart fancontrol service

sudo systemctl restart fancontrol.service

Important note

When system is put in suspend mode, the PWM feature controlling the fan speed is stopped. The fans will either spin at their lowest speed (Batch 1 fan) or stop spinning (Batch 2 fan). In the latest case, while this is not an issue for the SoC itself which is designed to run with passive cooling, it might have a negative impact on the HDD peripherals because the ambient temperature inside the case will build up. Therefore it is advised to ensure that when system is suspended the case ambient temperature will not exceed the operating temperature your HDDs are rated for.

We will revert to the fan type (Type A) we used for Batch 1 for the upcoming Batch 3.