Is there a way to find out how the computer was started...?

uotika · n00b Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 4

Hello,

Can anyone tell me if there is any way to find out (with software) what started the computer? In other words, I'd like to know if the PC was started by the user pressing the power button, or if it was started by an ACPI timer event.

Just in case you're wondering why would I need to know something like that, it's because I have built myself a HTPC using (Gentoo) Linux and VDR, and there I need to know if the PC was started by the user, or by a timer event. This is because I need to know whether or not to enable the auto shutdown feature of VDR at startup.

Now I accomplish this by checking if a preprogrammed VDR timer event is nearby, if yes then I assume the PC was started by a timer event. But this is not a 'clean' or 'nice' a solution, it would be much clearer to have the abovementioned info available.

Thanks for your time,
Kari

geforce · l33t Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 653 Location: Canada

As far as I know, there is no logs for PC boots, even for timed events.
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defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

just an idea... can't u take a look at the mouse/keyboard, and if in the first x minutes there is no activity -> log + halt, else end skript

uotika · n00b Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 4

Thank you for the info and suggestion.

However, the 'no activity' solution is not feasible, because the user might just power on the PC and TV and then do nothing else (but watch the TV, obviously). Besides, there is no mouse nor keyboard in the system, it's controlled solely with a remote control.

But thanks anyway for the effort, much appreciated!

-Kari

desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

Could you not perform similar monitoring of the remote?

jlh · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 12:06 am Post subject:

If I get this correctly, you have timers that will make the machine boot up automatically to record things, but it should also shut down automatically after it's done. However, if the user started the machine explicitely, there should be no automatic shutdown.

I would say that the information about how the system was started (timer, or user) is irrelevant here. If the user has interacted (via remote or anything else) with the system in any way while it was up, then do not shut down automatically (even if the system was actually started by a timer; at least I'd expect that behavior as a user). If there was no user interaction at all since boot up and there was a timer scheduled, then shut down automatically.

uotika · n00b Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 4

Thank you again to all of you for the suggestions, but the user activity solution is not 100% waterproof. It is almost, but not quite.

What makes it unreliable, is this scenario:

1. The user starts the system by pressing the power button.
2. The user does not do anything else for a certain period of time, which exceeds the inactivity timeout value. He could just start watching the channel which is on when the system starts, or he might do something else while waiting for a certain programme to start. This would result in the system shutting down itself, which would be unexpected by the user. In the worst case scenario, the system could shut down just when the user was about to start recording something.

I agree this is not very common a scenario. Usually the user actually does something with the system, but that's something I cannot count on.

Thanks,
Kari

Akkara · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 3:28 am Post subject:

Is there some way you could replace the power-on button with one that has two sets of contacts, and then wire a simple something to the second pair that puts out a signal that your startup script could check for?

I'm thinking something along the lines of, take apart a old usb mouse, find the contacts of one of the mouse buttons and (carefully!) wire it to the second set of power contacts, and plug the usb into a spare port.

It'll probably have to be the 'push down and stays down' variety since a momentary press is unlikely to be sensed by the time boot finishes. Or perhaps use a capacitor to hold a charge long enough to sense button-down.

MotivatedTea · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 5:44 am Post subject:

I came across something that might do what you're looking for: IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface). I'm afraid I can't do much more than point you at some links. I've never set it up, and it doesn't appear to be supported by my current systems. However, if you're lucky, your BIOS (or some related part of your system board) may be storing the information you want, and impitool might be able to read it for you.

This looks like a good place to start: http://buttersideup.com/docs/howto/IPMI_on_Debian.html. It's for Debian, but the two packages they refer to (ipmitool and openipmi) are both in portage. The first example on that page shows you that, if everything works, you'll get output like this:

BitJam · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject:

uotika · n00b Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 4

Thanks for the comments again!

This IPMI thing really looks like it could be just the thing I was looking for. I'll have to dig in to it and see if I can make it work. I'll let you know (in case someone is interested) if I can get it to work. If not, then some kind of hardware solution might come into question, too, but that, of course, means more work, so I'll have to think about it, if it really is worth the trouble.

-Kari