BIOS power-on reliability on t730 Thin Client

[davegrabo]

I'm running pfSense CE 2.7.2 on an HP t730 Thin Client (4GB RAM, 16GB MSATA SSD, Broadcom 5719 or 5720 multi-port NIC in the PCIe slot). I've got a total of four identical systems.

In addition to having the BIOS setting to power-on automatically after power outage (this seems to work reliably), I want the BIOS to also power-on the system every day at a scheduled time (this is a BIOS feature) and I want the system to react to Wake-on-LAN packets directed to the embedded NIC (yes, I know, don't use the Realtek NIC for pfSense; I'm not doing that). This is for the off chance that the system accidentally shuts down due to failure or accident (which may have happened once, hence why I want to do this).

Power-up (BIOS schedule or WOL) WILL work consistently after shutting down the system with the power button on the front panel.

Power-up (BIOS schedule or WOL) will NOT work at all after shutting down the system via the operating system (i.e., "shutdown" command at the pfSense CLI).

I'm guessing that the power button puts the system into a different state than the 'shutdown' command from the OS. The OS shutdown appears to put the system into a state where both the NIC WOL detection and the BIOS wake function are both blocked so they can't work.

What's going on here, and is there anything I can do to modify the 'shutdown' characteristics so that these 'wake' features are not disabled? Aside from the HP and Netgate forums - anyone have any suggestions for where else there might be folks who have some helpful ideas?