[mythtv-users] nvram-wakeup for the A8N-SLI

[Mercury Morris]

On 7/27/05, Frederick Martin <fwmartin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't have much luck getting this to work on my x86 shuttle box.
> There is a script to try to generate a config for unknown motherboards.
> It is called guess-helper.  Expect to reboot many times, and make
> changes to you bios each time.
> 
> Good luck,
> Frederick Martin

It must have been the "Good luck" line, Frederick, because I can
report that the A8N-SLI will Power-on By RTC Alarm !!

After a day of Google and MythTV archive searching, I found
enough information to come up with a combination of steps
that cause the system to boot BY ITSELF at a predetermined
time.  I was shocked when I heard the system running, because
I had given up on waiting and walked out of the room.

Since I hadn't witnessed it, I immediately repeated the steps and
it all worked.  Just Amazing!

Here are the steps I took:

 1. Added the following line to /etc/sysconfig/clock,
     but it may not be needed.  I have to remove this
     line and run the test again.

     CLOCKFLAGS="--directisa"
  
 2. Added the following lines to /boot/grub/grub.conf,
     as entry number 4, counting from 0.

     title PowerOff
           savedefault --default 0
           halt

 3. To test, I issued the following two commands, and then
      rebooted the machine.  Upon reboot, the machine immediately
      powered itself off.

      nvram-wakeup -C /etc/nvram-wakeup.conf -s $((`date +%s` + 601))

      echo "savedefault --default=4 --once quit" | grub

 4.   About five minutes after the nvram-wakeup command was
       issued, the machine powered on by itself and booted the
       default grub entry, 0.  The default line in grub.conf is 0.

Here are some of the specifics about the machine's software:

It's running Fedora Core 3, but with a 2.6.12-rc6 kernel,
grub-0.95-3, and nvram-wakeup-0.97.  I mention the version
of grub because in some of the searching, I found that there
seems to be different versions of it depending on the Linux
distribution.  Also, some of the parameters I used, such as
--default= and --once, I couldn't find documented in either a
2002 or a 2004 version of grub.pdf.  

Getting this A8N-SLI to power on by itself is a major step forward,
at least to me.  By getting this machine to act like a commercial VCR,
powering on and off at the appropriate times, moves it closer to
becoming a candidate for daily use.  Right now, it's only used
occassionally to actually record something.  It's main use is for
trying things out (such as nvram-wakeup), and then putting those
things that are found to work into the daily-use system.

Of course, nvram-wakeup will have to be tested on the daily-use
machine, because it's motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe.
But I figure that the A7N8X-E will work too, since it's a much more
popular board for MythTV systems.

-- 
MM