A small request

Hi

I have a test web server setup at home and am using WakeOnLan. I have configured my server to shutdown if it hasn't been accessed in the last half hour and is otherwise idle. What I am trying to do now is using another server write a script which tests to see if my server is online or not, if it is offline then it sends a magic packet over UDP to my server's IP and tells the user that server is being started (takes about 15 seconds) and then refreshes/redirects the page.

So basically I am looking for someone who can offer me free php/perl/python/whatever hosting which lets me use sockets. Then I will setup a dyndns webhop and voila I have a flexi-time webserver

Thanks

So initially I was amused that you were asking web hosting providers (such as ourselves) for free access to our services so that you could send a wake up to your own web server so you didn't have to purchase a hosting service from us

See that's cheeky right?!

But then I figured that in general, this would be a great service to offer - just issuing WOL packets as required.

And then I thought - this is the internet, everything has already been thought of:

http://www.rshut.com/products/wol/

Hi Paul

Thanks for the reply. I came across that site amongst others, but they require you to manually input your IP and MAC address. I would like it so that when I go to one of these WOL sites with a specially crafted URL it would automatically send the magic packet. All of the sites I have came across use POST form data (and rightly so), so I can't just create a query string and do it that way.

I guess I could do it with cURL and then send the data to the WOL site, but I don't know of any free hosting providers which offer that. Heck I don't really need hosting I just need 1 page Hmm, I have root access to a web server at work, but maybe that isn't such a good idea

Actually, that site uses POST, but works with GET also.

If you try the POST you'll see the GET in the URL - so you don't even need to work out the variable sequence from the form.

Wow, it works!

I now have a self-hibernating, self-aware web server, brings a whole new meaning to ondemand

It's practical for my needs (server is used by a handful of people) but obviously I wouldn't try anything like this is the wild.

Thanks again