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I have a RaspberryPi, running the standard Pi distro, and a computer running Linux 16.04 in the same local network with fixed IP adresses. The Pi is used to wake the computer by sending a Wake-on-Lan package and then tunnelling onto the computer via SSH.

Is there an easy and simple way for the computer to send a message to the Pi, which the Pi then interprets as the computer having started up succesfully and being reachable?

I already have set up a system where the Pi is continuously pinging the computer until it gets a response, but I specificly want to have the computer message the Pi and not the Pi checking up on the computer.

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    Just put something like echo foo | nc <pi ip address> <port> into /etc/rc.local on computer, and have pi listen on the given port for messages in separate script or even background. You could then use wait from script to know when background task finished. Commented Nov 16, 2018 at 18:42
  • And how would I set up the Pi to listen for that ping? Commented Nov 16, 2018 at 23:01
  • I've put that as an answer in more details. General idea is that you already have nc tool for sending packets and testing connection with most *nix systems, and it's easy to make a simpke server-client type of thing with it Commented Nov 16, 2018 at 23:41

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Reset to default
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Use nc - simplest method.

On computer( assuming it is a *nix system) : put ( echo "computer is up" | nc 192.168.0.123 6677 ) & into /etc/rc.local. The (...) & spawns background shell to prevent the rc.local script from blocking other things from execution while computer boots. Assume 192.68.0.123 is your Pi's IP address on same network as computer .

On Pi, have a process listening on port 6677 with nc -l 6677 after whatever command you're using to send wake on LAN signal. By default nc terminates once the sending side closed the connection ( which should happen after all bytes of "computer is up" string have been sent ). So you could do something like 

netreply=$( nc -l 6677)
case $netreply in
     "computer is up") echo "All good" ;;
     *)  echo some boo-boo happened ;;
esac
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  • Thanks, I'll try that out and see if that works. Commented Nov 17, 2018 at 2:07
  • I'm not sure rc.local works very well with systemd ... a more universal solution for most current Linux distros is to use a systemd service file that waits until the network interface is up and running... like this Commented Nov 17, 2018 at 2:23
  • @RubberStamp rc.local works with systemd and there is rc-local.service which executes /etc/rc.local script. See askubuntu.com/a/919598/295286 Can you explain what exactly you mean by "not sure ...works very well" part ? Even though I agree it'd be nicer to have an actual service made, /etc/rc.local is perfectly fine alternative. Commented Nov 17, 2018 at 2:33
  • Some distros may not include (or enable) the rc.local service in the default configuration. My understanding is that the rc.local systemd service runs after the network is up and running anyway. So, why not just put the messaging script its own service file for easy visibility and uniformity? ... I guess the point was, it's possible that a given Linux distro will not automatically run rc.local .... Commented Nov 17, 2018 at 3:00
  • @RubberStamp Fair enough. But if it's not enabled by default nothing stops us from enabling that service. But sure, it may be a viable alternative for visibility/uniformity to have it's own service. Commented Nov 17, 2018 at 3:05

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