holy crap, I figured it out! after more than a few weeks where my apartment was under construction and not having access to my computer until recently, I was about to give this thread another shot to help me figure things out... after double checking my rc.local file I decided to dig deeper and trace back what Slackware actually does when it puts the system to sleep and that's when I came across a file I had created a long time ago in my laptop days called disable_wol in /etc/pm/power.d!! removing the execute permissions on this file and putting my system to sleep without having to change anything else allowed not only the LEDs on the active NIC to be active, but I was able to wake my system up! SUCCESS! thanks to all who helped!

User shoots own foot! News at eleven!

Welcome to the club! Been there done that. Ain't a single one of us who hasn't done something like that. :D

Curiously, at work I have a Windows 7 Pro system that refuses to set WOL on shutdown but the Linux side works just fine. NIC LEDs keep blinking after shutdown from Windows, but the system refuses to awaken. Go figure. :scratch:

Although the OP's solution didn't help me with my problem, advice in this thread did. WOL was not working with the 4.19 kernel from slackware64-current, which I use in my 14.2 install to replace the 4.4 kernel due to instability issues with my nvme build. WOL would work fine if shut down from a 4.4.190 session, and the LED on my router for that device would stay lit, but neither would occur when shut down from a 4.19.72 kernel session. I wound up editing the "stop" function in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 to include the line just before the lines to bring the devices down. Worked great for me.

Hoping this helps someone else finding this thread while searching for a solution to their WOL problem.

Rather than edit the stock rc.d scripts, consider adding the command to /etc/rc.d/rc.local_shutdown. :)

But yeah, I run that command in all Linux systems I manage that need WOL. Seems to avoid headaches. :)

Yes, thanks, that's a better location. I was worried it would execute too soon there, but it works just fine in /etc/rc.d/rc.local_shutdown.

I also have a copy of the command in rc.local. Ensures the NIC is configured in case of abnormal shutdown. :)