Recovery and Wake on LAN

Recovery and Wake-on-LAN

The gateway can act as a small management node that stays independent of your NAS or server: it can wake a machine with Wake-on-LAN and check that a service answers. It is not IPMI/KVM, a power relay or full out-of-band management.

Keep the recovery node alive

• Power the ESP32 independently of the NAS (a NAS USB port that loses power at shutdown defeats the purpose). Consider backup power for the ESP32, router and modem together.
• The ESP32 needs your Wi-Fi/router, uplink and the VPN service; it cannot bypass a failed router or ISP.
• Do not make the only command path depend on a broker or Home Assistant hosted on the very NAS you want to wake.

Wake-on-LAN

Add a device in Automation → Wake-on-LAN (name and MAC). Enable WoL on the NAS/PC according to the manufacturer: support depends on model, adapter, firmware and standby power. A sent magic packet is not proof that the machine powered on.

Smart Recovery

Devices & Recovery builds on the saved WoL devices:

• Check now observes a known listening TCP port (choose a port the device really serves — port 22 is not universal).
• Recover with WoL prechecks, sends one bounded WoL burst if needed, waits, then optionally checks the service port.
• One active job, MAC cooldown and cancellation bound the work; jobs never replay after a reboot, and there is no power-cut or reboot action.
• Monitoring, guard, remote commands and notifications start off. Remote recovery through MQTT/ntfy needs Allow MQTT/ntfy recovery commands; protect broker and topic ACLs.

A TCP answer is not application health. Results are kept per boot.

Full guides: NAS-RECOVERY.md · SMART-RECOVERY.md.