Wake on Lan integration

[JSON Bourne]

I think Wake on Lan would be a great addition. We would be able to start our main PC when we want to stream a game instead of having to start it manually.
It would work somewhere along the lines of:

• Select game you want to stream from the machine in your living room
  
• Main PC starts up, machine in your living room periodically checks whether or not steam is running on main PC
  
• When steam is running, launch game and start streaming

I assume this would be fairly simple to integrate, and it would be a great addition to the overall experience :)

[XÆЯO_Vince]

This would be cool.

I worked around this for my streaming set-up by creating a shell script shortcut on the Linux client that uses the "wol" command, which you may have to download from your distro package manager if its not bundled.

You have to enable Wake-On-LAN on the Windows server PC in the BIOS as well as enable it for the Network Adapters in the Device Manager properties. Once this is done, you just pass the Server's NIC MAC address to the "wol" command on the client and click on the shell script then the server PC will boot or resume. This works really well for standby and hibernation modes. The PC will also start from a complete shutdown, however, you'll have to have automatic Windows login enabled or else the server PC will halt at the Windows login window and you'll have to walk back to the server PC and type in your login password. :P

Anyway, I can see Valve potentially using the "wol" command to make this feature happen pretty easily.

[Sire Sadr]

This would be a very helpful feature to start the server from the client system. If you implement this, please give us the possibility to shutdown the system too, so we can start and stop the host over the client.

[Mnstrspeed]

Wake-on-LAN intergration would be awesome.

I'm primarily use Linux and only boot into Windows to play games. However, with game streaming and Wake-on-LAN integration, I could just build a home server with a dedicated graphics card which simply turns on whenever I want to play a game and starts streaming to a Linux box once everything is booted up. In theory I would never have to interact with Windows again to play my Windows games!

[Leo]

Originally posted by irusloy:

This would be a very helpful feature to start the server from the client system. If you implement this, please give us the possibility to shutdown the system too, so we can start and stop the host over the client.

I set the host to sleep after 20 minutes of idle, that seems to work well.

[MichaelMKenny]

+1

[Press Alt+F4 To see name]

fantastic idea....hey look, mouseme...whats up lol

[Leo]

+1 on WoL.

Maybe the client should cache which games it has streamed before and from what host, so in the future it has an option to Stream even if that particular host is offline.. and when the user attempts to start the stream, the client will send the WoL packet.

[chortya]

Totally agree! I'm using teamviewer to wake my gaming server right now.

[wireframed]

Old thread, but seconded. I already have a little WOL bat file I use for my render nodes, but it would be awesome if Steam could automatically wake up a server - it would need to cache which games are available, of course, and be able to handle if that game was uninstalled since the client last saw the server, but seems fairly simple from an implementation standpoint. Biggest issue is, WOL is reliant on a lot of other mechanisms working correctly, from the NIC hardware to network setup (port forwarding etc.)
Unfortunately I'm not sure Valve wants to deal with the support nightmare. :-/

[Rapid Fire]

+1

...but don't forget also the remote shutdown implementation!

[Leo]

Remote standby you mean?
If you have wol to start it up, then setting a sleep timer can work for 90% of the case.

[Rapid Fire]

In my opinion the sleep timer is unsatisfactory.
I'd like to have a simple script implemented like: "shutdown -s -m \\user-desktop" which works instantly and in 100% of the cases...

[[masni] CYKA CLEANER]

so why u don't add non-steam game (that script) and stream it when u want to shutdown? :)

[Leo]

My timer works 100% of the time so far and it even helped me when i forgot to turn the server off sometimes.

[Rapid Fire]

@headless:
To my knowledge only a exe-file could be add to the library. In my case I've a bat-file so this doesn't work. Did I miss something?

@Leo S:
Sure, the timer method is an option, but you can't denied, that it would be better having the full control over the shutdown process for instant execution and noticeable feedback!? Furthermore this won't help the mass of steam users, which (we have to assume) aren't familiar with this windows function.

@community:
Apart from this I'm currently unable to get the shutdown command working. Something unusual on my server pc with Win8.1 prevent the execution of my command on my host pc (also Win 8.1), although I'd did intensive trouble shooting. Had anyone experience with that?