How to make a system suspend and resume on schedule?

Question

I have a Linux server that's only needed at workdays in work hours. There's no point having it powered on all the time.

How can I make a Linux system suspend and resume on set times and days without any supervision?

Answer 1

I've created a shell script for this purpose using systemctl suspend and rtcwake commands to manage the power.

When run, it'll work in a loop (15 minute cycles):

• checking what time and day of week it is,

• determining when it should wake up

• checking if it should suspend right now

#!/bin/bash

while [ 1=1 ]; do # repeat forever

        clear

        echo "Updated: $(date '+%F %T')"

        echo "### TIME SECTION"

        SLEEP_H=18 # What hour should the system suspend at?
        WAKE_H=8 # What hour should the system wake up at?

        # check what day of the week it is now
        DOW=$(date +%w) #  1 = monday, 5 = friday etc.

        echo "Day of week: $DOW"

        # check what time is it now
        H=$(date +%H)
        M=$(date +%M)

        NOW_S=$(date +%s)

        echo "Hour: $H, minute: $M"

        #date +%s --date "tomorrow 8:00"

        if [[ $DOW -lt 5 ]]; then
                echo "It's Monday to Thursday!"
                WAKE="tomorrow $WAKE_H:00"
        else
                echo "It's Friday to Sunday!"
                WAKE="monday $WAKE_H:00"
        fi

        WAKE_S="$(date --date "$WAKE" +%s)"

        WAKE_SR=$(( $WAKE_S - $NOW_S))

        echo
        echo "Wake: $WAKE"
        echo "Wake relative seconds: $WAKE_SR"
        echo
        rtcwake -m no -s "$WAKE_SR"

        # sleep section

        sleep 15m

        echo "### SLEEP SECTION"

        if [[ $H -gt $SLEEP_H ]]; then # sleep if the hour is right
                systemctl suspend
                continue
        else
                echo "It's too early to sleep"
        fi

        if [[ $DOW -gt 5 ]]; then # sleep if it's saturday or sunday
                systemctl suspend
                continue
        else
                echo "It's not weekend - gotta stay up!"
        fi

done

This script is set to make the system wake up between Monday to Friday at 8 AM, and fall asleep at 6 PM.

It'll sleep during weekends and nights. Feel free to modify it to your needs.

I keep this script in /root/power-schedule.sh. Make sure it's executable: `sudo chmod +x /root/power-schedule.sh'

Also put the script in crontab with the @reboot time to make sure that a sudden power outage will not interrupt your schedule.

Run:

sudo crontab -e

And add this line:

@reboot         exec /root/power-schedule.sh

You might also want to configure the UEFI/BIOS so that the machine will power on when it detects AC power - this will cause it to boot up after a power outage (instead of staying off - which is usually the default behaviour).

Answer 2

One liner:

rtcwake -m mem -s $(($(date --date "20:30" +%s) - $(date +%s)))

This won't work if you have network shares mounted, or your network wakes up when it sees traffic.

Disable Wake on Lan:

ethtool -s eno1 wol d

or delegate it to only on "Magic Packet" with:

ethtool -s eno1 wol m

To unmount network shares:

sudo fuser /mount/share

And end / kill those processes, then umount the share, or umount -f -l if you must.

Sometimes it will take while before these time out, so this works better:

while sleep 1; do rtcwake -m mem -s $(($(date --date "20:30" +%s) - $(date +%s))) && break; done 

Instead of 20:30 you can also say tomorrow 9:00. Don't worry if rtcwake reports another time, it will do so if your system clock is UTC.