Getting two fedora machines and other devices to see eachother at home

madscientist132 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 13:04:30 GMT

I do have this pc with fedora 44 KDE and mom has her fedora 44 xfce machine.

Both get internet from the same optical router by means of ethernet wires.

Given the fact that both have access to internet, how can i configure both machines to be able to send and receive files between each one and / or share a printer attach to one of them?

I also could get an android tablet attached to my computer (the kde one) using kde connect on both devices, however, does exist any gui independent manner of achieving connectivity between devices? I do wish to be able to grsync to the sdcard of my tablet which is full of books i learn from, i couldn't do that yet.

WOL (Wake On Lan) 101

Spazzy — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:16:23 GMT

I started a WOL adventure and it became involved enough I thought I'd share what was required.

Beginning with routers//switches/nics, here's something I was misinformed on.
In the old days with power off, RJ45s would have LEDs lit showing there was a link. Grn/red/etc. That's no longer true. Yes, they show connection status when on, but no led does not mean no traffic is possible. They're saving electricity so that LED is turned off. It might mean no traffic is possible, but not certain.

Most consumer routers now disable all port forwarding to the broadcast address. So you can't send a magic packet unless the MAC address is either stored in the ARP cache or if the router has the capability of manually sending to it when it's powered off. DDWRT has this in the Administration tab under WOL. For mmy Netgear Nighthawk with OEM firmware, WOL works within the local lan only, and I can't say on the router as my systems are behind that on a switch. Only my routers flashed with DDWRT will forward to the broadcast address and work from the outside world (WAN). Netgear disabled all that in their firmware years ago. Others disabled it 20 years ago. Whether your devices will pass these packets is anyone's guess.

I also believed and was confirmed in a converstaion with TP-Link support, that a green switch will NOT pass WOL magic packets due to the connection being dropped for power reasons. I find now that is not true, but that was not easy to discover after having been told from the horses mouth it will not work. I was told that required a managed switch or at least a smart switch (in some cases of smart switch), again not true. The $15 gig-e 8P switch I have works. But there's no nice leds telling you it will.

Not all motherboards support WOL. In my case, all the ASRock, MSI, Asus, Intel and Gigabyte boards I have do support it, but that could change. For instance ASRock specifically says every board does, but I haven't seen or looked for similar statements from others.

In the UEFI setup, I'll use my current MSI board as an example, there's now 5 options that all need set in order to make WOL work. All 5 are set by default to disable it.
EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet) is #1. Must be disabled.
ErP (European Energy Nonsense) must be disabled.
Fast Boot must be disabled.
Wake by PCI devices Must be Enabled.
Wake by Ethernet Must be Enabled.
On my Gigabyte board, Wake by PCI devices cannot be enabled unless Wake by USB KB/Mouse is also enabled.

Wake control by BIOS or OS... Here it gets sticky... For now I think for Fedora it must be set to BIOS in spite of them saying it should be controlled by OS. But so far with a BIOS updated to one dated a month ago, Fedora won't wake by ANYthing but the power button unless it's set to BIOS... I have more to investigate here, but I'm gonna say for now this needs set to BIOS and that it will change in the coming months/years when Fedora supports that.

In windoze, I only have tested win7, but in Network / Adapter / Properties / Configure / Advanced there's many items which need set. On my ASRock Win7 system there's 5 items here
Energy Efficient Ethernet (Disabled)
Green Ethernet (Disabled)
Shutdown Wake-On-Lan (Enabled)
Wake on Magic Packet (Enabled)
WOL & Shutdown Link Speed set to whatever speed your attached network device falls back to. I use 100Mbps and it works.

Now on the Power Management tab of the Network Adapter 3 more
You must CHECK the box for Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power
Now options appear for Allow this device to wake the computer
And Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer and I have both those checked as there's no other way I want it to wake other than me sending a packet.

That's all there is to it on Win7! If the rest of your network is copacetic, you're in business!

Now to Fedora. I've used the below process on systems wtih 3 different brands of motherboard, ASRock, MSI and Gigabyte and Bios dated from 2013 to this past month. All of these are on wired ethernet but I'm pretty sure this will also work over wifi. I'm able to wake these systems from S3 or S5 using the Mr-Webb Android WOL app and my phone or Samsung tablet. This worked on Fedora 44 KDE and Workstation. So far I've got 5 systems with 3 different OS waking from S3 and S5, but only on the local lan so far.

After doing all the above nonsense in the UEFI BIOS:
Open a terminal window and issue the following steps to basically do what we just showed in Windoze.

Code:

phil@fedora:~$ ip link

1: lo:  mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000

    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00

2: enp42s0:  mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000

    link/ether fc:9d:05:04:f3:49 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

    altname enxfc9d0504f349

3: wlo1:  mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000

    link/ether 52:b8:40:42:dc:ee brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr f4:28:9d:63:37:ad

    altname wlp41s0

    altname wlxf4289d6337ad

In that example the 2nd device is enp42s0 which is my wired ethernet. That will be used in later commands. Replace with your device name. This was different for me on different systems but the verbal name which we also need was consistent.

Now issue:

Code:

phil@fedora:~$ sudo ethtool enp42s0

[sudo] password for phil:

Settings for enp42s0:

        Supported ports: [ TP    MII ]

        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                1000baseT/Full

        Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only

        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes

        Supported FEC modes: Not reported

        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                1000baseT/Full

        Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only

        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes

        Advertised FEC modes: Not reported

        Link partner advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                             100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                             1000baseT/Full

        Link partner advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only

        Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes

        Link partner advertised FEC modes: Not reported

        Speed: 1000Mb/s

        Duplex: Full

        Auto-negotiation: on

        master-slave cfg: preferred slave

        master-slave status: slave

        Port: Twisted Pair

        PHYAD: 0

        Transceiver: external

        MDI-X: Unknown

        Supports Wake-on: pumbg

        Wake-on: d

        Link detected: yes

The second to last line shows "Wake-on: d" which means disabled. The previous line shows Supports Wake-on: pumbg which means there's 5 ways this device will wake the system, we're interested in enabling "g". Google for the others.

Now we need a long-name

Code:

phil@fedora:~$ nmcli connection show

NAME                UUID                                  TYPE      DEVICE

Wired connection 1  f269c6cc-2a99-35b2-b6e4-4b8eeff749d2  ethernet  enp42s0

lo                  63d3c654-ed8f-4d9e-859d-ec0af89251a0  loopback  lo

phil@fedora:~$

And obviously we want "Wired connection 1" which corresponds to the network port name enp42s0 (or your device name)

Issue:

Code:

phil@fedora:~$ sudo nmcli connection modify "Wired connection 1" 802-3-ethernet.wake-on-lan magic

[sudo] password for phil:

phil@fedora:~$

Which ends silently but sets the magic attribute allowing the card to wake the system.

I believe this makes the change permanent:

Code:

phil@fedora:~$ sudo nmcli device reapply enp42s0

Connection successfully reapplied to device 'enp42s0'.

phil@fedora:~$

Check to be sure it worked:

Code:

phil@fedora:~$ sudo ethtool enp42s0

[sudo] password for phil:

Settings for enp42s0:

        Supported ports: [ TP    MII ]

        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                1000baseT/Full

        Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only

        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes

        Supported FEC modes: Not reported

        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                1000baseT/Full

        Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only

        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes

        Advertised FEC modes: Not reported

        Link partner advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                             100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                             1000baseT/Full

        Link partner advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only

        Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes

        Link partner advertised FEC modes: Not reported

        Speed: 1000Mb/s

        Duplex: Full

        Auto-negotiation: on

        master-slave cfg: preferred slave

        master-slave status: slave

        Port: Twisted Pair

        PHYAD: 0

        Transceiver: external

        MDI-X: Unknown

        Supports Wake-on: pumbg

        Wake-on: g

        Link detected: yes

The second to last line showing a 'g' means it's enabled to wake the system.

Anyone using TP-Link Onemesh?

Spazzy — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:25:39 GMT

Title says it all. Search here turned up no results on the word onemesh. Saw this in a Newegg email and I see it's quite affordable if it works as planned. I currently have 3 Netgear Nighthawk routers, 2 with DDWRT but they're not a mesh network so all the radios and names are a nuisance. Years ago a mesh network was big bucks and not necessary (still not necessary, but would be a nice thing to have). Wondered if anyone had experience with these. Other affordable items I've seen are handcuffed to alexa and such which I have no interest in.

https://www.newegg.com/TP-Link-Arche...82E16833704658

https://www.newegg.com/tp-link-usa-c...375-0094-000D6

FedoraForum.org - Servers & Networking

Getting two fedora machines and other devices to see eachother at home

WOL (Wake On Lan) 101

Anyone using TP-Link Onemesh?