Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

[Posted October 23, 2008 by cook]

Nathan Harrington discusses. automating remote shutdowns for power savings on IBM developerWorks. "Recent pushes for "green" technology focus mostly on talk, with little action for the typical home- or small-office environment. Many users leave their systems online continuously through laziness or ignorance, resulting in a significant source of power consumption, as well as an additional vector for malware propagation. The tools and code presented here allow you to find those inactive systems and securely start the shutdown process. With a Linux® box monitoring your network connections using Argus and some custom Perl code, any system that supports Perl can be set to be remotely shut down when a centralized set of inactivity rules are met."

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 23, 2008 18:49 UTC (Thu) by cma (guest, #49905) [Link] (3 responses)

Anythng like that but shutting down Windows workstations?

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 23, 2008 18:58 UTC (Thu) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link] (1 responses)

Windows already has it built in. See the power options in the control panel.

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 24, 2008 7:40 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

Well, Linux has it, too. For example kpowersave supports auto-suspend after a defined
interval of inactivity.

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Nov 6, 2008 10:54 UTC (Thu) by skeptik (guest, #55073) [Link]

A windows service that shutsdown idled windows worstation (Python Free Software) :

http://kik-it.homelinux.org/downloads/PYTHON_STUFF/UserId...

simple howto (in french) : http://kik-it.homelinux.org/static.php?page=UserIdleWinSh...

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 24, 2008 5:03 UTC (Fri) by horen (guest, #2514) [Link] (2 responses)

"Shut down idle computers on your network"?!

Hell, no!

Run SETI@home or join-up with a local academic GRID network.

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 27, 2008 8:22 UTC (Mon) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link] (1 responses)

That's great in the short term for those projects, but it would be good if we still have a planet that is livable in the long term (fewer severe weather events, less mass migration from unlivable areas, less resource conflict/wars, etc), so reducing electricity usage is well worth it - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming.

Data centers use about 1.2% of all US power, less than some estimates but still growing fast - see http://www.energystar.gov/ia/products/downloads/koomeysum...

I'm sure this will cue an interesting discussion...

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 29, 2008 3:37 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

When the Sun goes into a cooler burn cycle and ice coats the northern latitudes, you'll be glad for the extra heat from your SETI@Home cluster!

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 24, 2008 5:12 UTC (Fri) by quozl (guest, #18798) [Link] (3 responses)

Pity the article didn't cover how to start the computers up again at a scheduled time. I'd be able to shutdown or suspend more of them if I could do that. Both wake-on-lan (WOL) and BIOS or RTC alarms. I wonder if there is a standard way to wake at a set time?

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 24, 2008 6:34 UTC (Fri) by TRS-80 (guest, #1804) [Link]

ACPI has a standard way of setting a wakeup time - check out the MythTV wiki for more details.

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 24, 2008 9:20 UTC (Fri) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (1 responses)

I would think that this being an article on networks, it would make more sense to keep one computer running and have that sort out the timing, rather than rely on each client's BIOS to do the right thing at the right time with any synchronicity, through power failures, etc. Some BIOS don't even have this option, or it's buggy, or it fails to take account of Daylight Savings, or it just doesn't work at all, or it's inflexible. And what if you *need* to wake up the stations at an previously unscheduled time? You're falling back on WOL or manual intervention anyway.

Personally, I use WOL with a central server in the school I work in. It has it's /etc/ethers filled out and a script to sort out groups of computers (e.g. wake up classrooms, wake up ICT Suite, wake up office machines, etc.).

The client computers (including a couple of Linux servers which do filtering/caching/etc.) shut down when the last user logs off or it hits a certain time (some idiot always leaves one logged on for no reason). In the morning, I can wake the entire ICT Suite or similar with a scheduled task fired off by either a Linux or Windows server, depending on what it's being woken up for. I can also just run the same script at any time if there's an unscheduled class that wants to use them quickly or if there's been a power problem that has resolved itself. The computer running the flashy LCD display at the front of the school comes up and down on its own schedule using WOL fired off by the same servers.

Cron jobs, scripts and WOL - it's the best solution I've found. With suitable fiddling, I've even had the computers boot up each night when the server has switched into "maintenance" mode - they boot off the network, where the PXE boots into a special boot disk (only between scheduled hours etc.) which does some maintenance/testing on the machines and could even rebuild the entire machine from scratch, they then shutdown and the server switches back into normal mode just before the day starts in order to continue operation as normal.

The only problem I have with that is the cleaners who love to switch stuff off and unplug it but that's just a universal bane of IT anyway...

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 30, 2008 13:01 UTC (Thu) by alfille (subscriber, #1631) [Link]

You should publish more about your work. It sounds like the start of a great open source project.

Shut down idle computers on your network automatically (IBM developerWorks)

Posted Oct 27, 2008 8:16 UTC (Mon) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

Interesting article but it mentions Argus without actually saying what it does: turns out it's a real-time monitor for network traffic flows, so the definition of 'inactive' is based on network activity. This could be a problem if the machine was running an antivirus scan, periodic fsck, etc, so it would be better to also enable SNMP agents and check for certain processes via the MIBs available on most OSs, and maybe for CPU usage. This could be added into the centralised monitor approach quite easily, and it has the merit of being agnostic to the type of OS on managed systems.

Argus... (x 2) ?

Posted Oct 30, 2008 13:33 UTC (Thu) by jmmc (guest, #34939) [Link]

First, I read devworks often, my vote: worthy link.

I second the comment above for a 'how to turn PCs back _on_ after a specified off interval had elapsed' extension - I had wondered same thing.

Also, via googling, you'll find there are two (2) net mon projects, both actively developed, which use the name Argus:

http://qosient.com/argus/ (mentioned in the article, also, 'masked' in Gentoo..sigh... ;)

and

http://argus.tcp4me.com/

Afaict, neither project seems to reference the other in their 'history' (unless I missed it...I scanned it pretty quickly, so feel free to check me on that).

Also found this, a research oriented link also related to network monitoring:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/estan/CS614/Survey.html (undated, but doesn't seem to point to either of the two links above).