Proxmox Wake on LAN Setup: Enable WOL That Survives Reboots

Proxmox wake on LAN setup is a BIOS setting, the server’s MAC address and, on some network cards, one extra line so WOL stays on after a reboot. Wake-on-LAN is one of the most beneficial things that you can configure for your Proxmox server. With Proxmox WOL set up, a server that’s been shut down can be powered back on through its network interface, so you don’t have to be in front of it to turn it on.

The actual settings on Proxmox are pretty simple. Before we look at how to set up wake-on-LAN in Proxmox, there are a few important things you need to be aware of:

• Your motherboard must support wake-on-LAN and you will have to ensure that it’s enabled in your BIOS.
• If you have a motherboard that supports WiFi, you may have to disable it in order to get wake-on-LAN working properly. It’s best to test it out with WiFi enabled, but if it doesn’t work properly, the first thing I’d test is disabling WiFi.
• We will need to get the MAC address of our Proxmox server to configure wake-on-LAN.

How to Set Up Wake-on-LAN in Proxmox

1. The first step is to ensure that it’s enabled in your BIOS. Accessing the BIOS will be different on most motherboards, but the process generally requires you to restart the device and select a specific key to enter the BIOS (generally, F2, F10, F12, or Delete).

After you have accessed the BIOS, the process will be entirely different based on the motherboard you have. On this device, the Power On By PCI-E option inside of APM Configuration must be enabled to set up wake-on-LAN, and ErP Ready must stay disabled, because enabling it switches the other wake options off. Once both are set and saved, boot back into Proxmox.

2. After the motherboard has wake-on-LAN enabled, we need to get the MAC address of the network interface that our Proxmox server is using. Access the Proxmox shell, then run the command below to list out the IP addresses in use.

ip addr

After running the command, find the network interface listing your Proxmox IP address (the vmbr0 network interface has the IP address of my Proxmox server). The most important portion of this command is the MAC address (c8:7f:54:53:c6:76 below). This is how you’ll wake your Proxmox server if it’s shut down, so take note of this MAC address.

Proxmox MAC Address for Wake-on-LAN (Options and pvenode)

Proxmox VE can also store the MAC address you use for wake-on-LAN (Proxmox only uses it when one node in a cluster wakes another). It’s the MAC that ip addr showed in step 2. On a single node, the packet has to come from another device like your router, or etherwake on another machine (step 3), so skip to the next section.

As of Proxmox VE 9.2 (October 2026), select Datacenter, then your node, then System, then Options. Select MAC address for Wake on LAN, click Edit, enter the MAC address from step 2, and select OK.

You can also set it from the node’s shell (the second command reads it back):

pvenode config set -wakeonlan XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
pvenode config get --property wakeonlan

If it’s never set, step 3’s cluster wake fails with “No wake on LAN MAC address defined”.

Keep Wake-on-LAN Enabled After a Proxmox Reboot (ethtool)

The BIOS isn’t the whole setup, because the network card has its own Wake-on-LAN setting. On some hardware it doesn’t last beyond a reboot, and on others it’s already on and you won’t change anything. Set it on the physical interface, not vmbr0 (the bridge-ports value under vmbr0 in /etc/network/interfaces, often nic0 on a 9.1+ install, eno1 below), and check it with ethtool, which Proxmox VE includes.

ethtool eno1 | grep Wake-on

Supports Wake-on lists what the card can do and Wake-on is what it’s set to. If there’s no g in the first line, the card can’t wake on a magic packet, and if the second line shows d, it’s off. To turn it on in Proxmox, enable Wake-on-LAN for magic packets with the command below.

ethtool -s eno1 wol g

That only lasts until the next reboot. To make it stick, add the post-up line under the existing iface eno1 inet manual line in /etc/network/interfaces, then run ifreload -a or reboot.

iface eno1 inet manual
        post-up /usr/sbin/ethtool -s eno1 wol g

The alternative Proxmox staff have suggested on the forum is a systemd .link file at /etc/systemd/network/90-wakeonlan.link. Keep the naming lines, because this file replaces Debian’s default one for the card and the interface can be misnamed without them.

Only the first .link file that matches a card is applied. The Proxmox VE 9.1 and later installer pins interface names by default. If ls /usr/local/lib/systemd/network shows a 50-numbered file, that file wins and this one is ignored, so use the post-up line instead.

[Match]
MACAddress=<mac-address-here>
Type=ether

[Link]
NamePolicy=keep kernel database onboard slot path
AlternativeNamesPolicy=database onboard slot path mac
MACAddressPolicy=persistent
WakeOnLan=magic

Link files are copied to the initramfs, so run the command below before you reboot.

update-initramfs -u -k all

Reboot and run the ethtool check again, and it should show Wake-on: g.

Send the Wake-on-LAN Magic Packet

3. The next step is to fully shut down your Proxmox server. After it’s shut down, you’ll have to send a wake-on-LAN packet to wake the device.

This process can be done in many different ways, but the packet is a broadcast, so it has to be sent on the server’s network. In the example below, I am using pfSense (Services > Wake-on-LAN, select the interface, enter the MAC address and click Send).

A great command-line tool that can be used is etherwake (on a Debian machine, sudo apt install etherwake, then sudo etherwake -i <interface> <MAC address>).

If you have multiple Proxmox nodes in a cluster and set the node’s MAC in System > Options (above), right-click the offline node and select Wake-on-LAN, or run pvenode wakeonlan <node> from any other node.

After the magic packet is sent, assuming that everything is configured properly in the motherboard, the device should turn back on!