Waking up a NAS from OS X at boot time using Wake-on-LAN (WOL)

Since OS X 10.11 El Capitan protects certain system directories from modifications, my NASwake solution to wake a NAS once the Mac starts up published back in 2010 is no longer working.

I decided against building another .pkg installer since it requires root permissions and I also prefer using Homebrew instead of some obscure binary for sending the magic WOL packet. Here are the four steps to start your Wake-on-Lan-capable NAS once your Mac starts up:

1. Install “Homebrew” (required for the wakeonlan script)
2. Install the wakeonlan script using the Homebrew package manager
3. Save the naswake plist to /Library/LaunchDaemons
4. Save the naswake shell script to /usr/local/bin and set your NAS’s MAC-address

1. Install Homebrew

See http://brew.sh for instructions. Once installed, check with brew doctor if Homebrew was installed properly.

2. Install the wakeonlan script using the Homebrew package manager

brew install wakeonlan

This will install the wakeonlan Perl script. See man wakeonlan for details.

3. Save the naswake plist to /Library/LaunchDaemons

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.trick77.wol2.plist

Paste the XML below into the editor.

4. Save the naswake shell script to /usr/local/bin

sudo nano /usr/local/bin/naswake.sh
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/naswake.sh

Paste the script below into the editor. Don’t forget to set your NAS’ MAC address in the last line of the script!

That’s it! Make sure WOL is enabled in the NAS.