I am looking for a method to make my Linux system startup at a specify time. If this cannot be done from a cold boot, can the system wake up from hibernation or sleep? My goal is to have the hard drives not spinning so it will be quieter while it is not being used. Optimally I would love to have the system-fans and the CPU fans no spinning either until needed. Can anyone think of a way to do this?

Extra details:
I have a dedicated linux machine using MythTV that records every morning around 5:30 am. I leave the machine on during the night so it can record in the early morning, but it makes a fair amount of noise. I have a cron-job set to turn off the machine after it finishes recording. Optimally I would like the machine to boot up just before it has to record.

"Optimally I would like the machine to boot up just before it has to record."

Put this command in cron:

shutdown -r now

see:

man shutdown



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Steve Stites

Jailbait, I am not sure whether you are trying to be funny or that you simply did not read my post. That is completely opposite of what I am want and it is not helpful at all. I do not need to shutdown the computer on time. I can already that. I need to START the computer on a specified time.

IIRC some bios's support booting the computer at a specified time, check your bios to see if it has that functionality

"can the system wake up from hibernation or sleep?"

Yes. Have cron issue this command at the required time:

shutdown -r now


The system will shut down and restart.


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Steve Stites

I see. Thank you. I did not understand your answer before. But I am still a little confused.

If ran the command 'shutdown -t now -r 05:20', the system would shutdown and reboot at 05:20? Or does the system have to put into hibernation and this command added to cron?

BTW, what's the command to put a system into hibernation mode?

Well I have tried several things and I still have nothing that will work for my machine.

I tried ACPI Wake.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/My...tNext/ACPIWake

I tried NVRam-wakeup. I even tried some weird Poweroff Kernel.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/My...783aba52952cfe

I would love any suggestions.

"If ran the command 'shutdown -t now -r 05:20', the system would shutdown and reboot at 05:20?"

You would get an error message because you specified the time of the shutdown twice, now and at 05:20. The restart happens immediately at the end of the shutdown without any time delay.

"BTW, what's the command to put a system into hibernation mode?"

Here is a decent explanation of how to go into hibernation mode:

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/24/1716222

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Steve Stites