How do I get WakeOnLAN working when my network controller uses the sky2 module?

Question

I have an Aopen i945GMM-HL motherboard. It still works fine, and the BIOS is set to allow WakeOnLAN to power up the machine but since a recent OS update those magic packets just don't work anymore.

Here's the output of lspci -v for the NIC:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 22)
    Subsystem: AOPEN Inc. Device 0607
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43
    Memory at fdefc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    I/O ports at ce00 [size=256]
    [virtual] Expansion ROM at fdd00000 [disabled] [size=128K]
    Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 2
    Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data
    Capabilities: [5c] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/2 Maskable- 64bit+
    Capabilities: [e0] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
    Kernel driver in use: sky2

running ver. 3.4.6-1 of the kernel.

Answer 1

The below information is from the OP, as he can't answer his own question for 7 more hours.

The solution for this problem was quite simple. Apparently back when the kernel I used to use was made, power management options were never read from the BIOS. All that changed, but some BIOSes report their data incorrectly resulting in breakage of some power management features for some users. Workarounds were posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List as patches but it was decided to add a module option instead.

So. If you're having a hard time getting wakeonlan to work with your system despite what ethtool & your BIOS settings say, try putting this into a .conf file (e.g. sky2.conf) in /etc/modprobe.d/

options sky2 legacy_pme=1

FYI, if unloading the sky2 module to try it with the legacy_pme option yourself, be sure to set wakeonlan back on with

sudo ethtool -s eth0 wol g

before powering the system down