Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 09:48:39 -0600 From: Server Admin <admin@sage-one.net> To: <jeff@idealso.com>, <linux-user@egr.msu.edu>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: [GLLUG] Re: apcupsd Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.20020315094839.01190748@mail.sage-one.net> In-Reply-To: <NFBBJDLNADNIPCNOAPMHCEJHCFAA.jeff@idealso.com> References: <3.0.5.32.20020315085623.01166da0@mail.sage-one.net>
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Well, Jeff, I didn't want to "rain on your parade", but I'm afraid you have a UPS that will not tell your computer when to shut down and that's important of course. However, they WILL sense when the power has an outage and kick in to keep your computer running. BUT, that means either you have to hope the power comes back on before the battery runs out, OR that you happen to be present when the power goes off and can manually shut down the computer. Short answer: IF you are expecting the dumb UPS to monitor the system and make a safe shutdown, you are wasting time. However, as I said earlier, if you have a network and at least ONE smartups that CAN monitor the power/battery by communicating with the UPS, you can use the dummies on the workstations with each running a copy of apcupsd as a "slave". Then, the master with the smartups KNOWS what to do and can be configured to tell the other machines with the dummies to shut down properly. I have tested this by pulling out the wall plug and I can attest to the fact that this daemon worked beautifully. Each machine on the network started "talking" immediately acknowledging they knew about the power outage and would be shutting down. Also, sent messages to the consoles that there will be no more logins and thus warning everyone to get off. I have those stations with dummies set to shut down in two minutes after no return of power. I let the servers continue until they reach the allowable low battery level... then they will shut down too. Conversely, when I put the plug back in, the smartups senses that and tells every machine to abort the shut down. If I don't put the plug back in within the 2 minutes (for the dummies only), they all save files and shut down gracefully. Sorry for the bad news....but, it's NOT the software. You have a limited UPS that will work, but will not tell you anything. Not even how much load it's using to run the equipment plugged in. Only way is to pull the plug and see what happens. apcupsd works well and works well on UNIX and Windows stations. I have a "warm & fuzzy" feeling about the reliability of this daemon. Coincidentally, am installing another APC Smart-UPS 1500 today. Pricey but smart! At 10:22 AM 3.15.2002 -0500, Jeff Lawton wrote: >>>> <fontfamily><param>Arial</param><color><param>0000,0000,ffff</param><smaller>does the smart ups plug and go? (is this dumb ups worth the hassle?) </smaller></color></fontfamily><excerpt> <fontfamily><param>Tahoma</param><smaller>-----Original Message----- </smaller></fontfamily><bold>From:</bold> Server Admin [mailto:admin@sage-one.net] <bold>Sent:</bold> Friday, March 15, 2002 9:56 AM <bold>To:</bold> jeff@idealso.com; linux-user@egr.msu.edu; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG <bold>Subject:</bold> RE: [GLLUG] Re: apcups Forgot to point out, notice on my UPS output sent earlier, toward the bottome it shows: "FIRMWARE : 600.1.D" THAT, indicates that the driver has been installed properly in order to produce the info. By contrast, here's a dumb ups output which is more like yours: APC : 001,014,0349 DATE : Thu Mar 14 19:33:50 2002 HOSTNAME : richardm RELEASE : 3.8.5 UPSNAME : UPS_IDEN CABLE : Ethernet Link MODEL : (slave) UPSMODE : Net Slave STARTTIME: Thu Mar 14 15:49:08 2002 SHARE : NetworkUPS MASTERUPD: Fri Mar 15 08:54:57 2002 LINEFAIL : OK BATTSTAT : OK STATFLAG : 0x408 Status Flag END APC : Fri Mar 15 08:56:10 2002 At 09:47 AM 3.15.2002 -0500, Jeff Lawton wrote: >>>> This is from messages Jun 17 11:08:28 CRMC apcupsd[295]: apcupsd 3.8.5 (4 January 2002) freebsd startup succeeded <excerpt> -----Original Message----- <bold>From:</bold> linux-user-admin@egr.msu.edu [mailto:linux-user-admin@egr.msu.edu]<bold>On Behalf Of </bold>Server Admin <bold>Sent:</bold> Friday, March 15, 2002 8:59 AM <bold>To:</bold> jeff@idealso.com; linux-user@egr.msu.edu; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG <bold>Subject:</bold> RE: [GLLUG] Re: apcups Well, then you may not be starting it right. You don't need to reboot. Here are the various commands to manage the daemon and you can watch what happens: # sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apcupsd.sh restart # sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apcupsd.sh stop # sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apcupsd.sh start # sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apcupsd.sh status For straight start for now, use this: # /usr/local/sbin/apcupsd BTW, if you don't have the /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apcupsd.sh.sample file renamed to /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apcupsd.sh (and made executable chmod 0755), it will not start the daemon on any reboot. If you do not see the "events" log, then it's never started. Instead, look at this log: #tail -f /var/log/messages I noticed on your next post, you ask if there is a better port... this one works fine. You are trying to get a dumb UPS to "talk". In fact, if you have a Windoze machine, install Power Chute or Power Alert (or whichever software came with it). You'll have the same results. It will not load a driver because the com port will NOT detect any new hardware. We've gone through this frustration, even put a Spectrum Analyzer on the UPS to see what the pins were putting out. Some pins indicated were just a tiny bit of "noise" and nothing intellegent enough. If you want to try other ports anyway, the next best (probably comparable) is NUT..... Methinks it is the hardeware, NOT the software! Also, you need to designate the device I gave you in the config file.... At 07:48 AM 3.15.2002 -0500, Jeff Lawton wrote: >>>> I do not have a file /var/log/apcupsd.events. the shell script runs at boot with no screen messages. yes the the cable is the # on the cable. you are correct about the apcupsd not starting in smart mode without a connection. The docs said that if a connection is lost with a dumb ups apcupsd would not know. I also tryed apctest and it does not tell me anything. is there any way I can check the serial port from the comand prompt? <excerpt> -----Original Message----- <bold>From:</bold> Server Admin [mailto:admin@sage-one.net] <bold>Sent:</bold> Thursday, March 14, 2002 10:52 PM <bold>To:</bold> jeff@idealso.com; linux-user@egr.msu.edu; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG <bold>Subject:</bold> RE: [GLLUG] Re: apcups Jeff: No, sio0 is not the device. You should be using this: "DEVICE /dev/ttyd0" # For com 1 Then make sure you have the right cable number which is found on the flat side of the connector. I gather that is where you got the number used. Otherwise your configuration looks correct. When starting the daemon, look at #tail -f /var/log/apcupsd.events and see what is happening. If it shows no errors and that "startup succeeded" then you have the right device assigned. It will not start with the wrong com port device and show an error in the log. I'm afraid with a "dumb UPS" you are not going to see much more.... maybe some one else has some tricks I don't know about... I'd like to learn about them too because I have several "dummies" here. I've overcome the problem as said before by using a APC smartups as a master on one machine and the dummies as "slaves" on the other machines. The master can signal the other machines on the network to shut down after a designated amount of time (well within the limits of the battery of course). Thus, the dummies (through the apcupsd daemons on them) do what they are told to do by the master. You can set the timeouts on each machine. At 10:29 PM 3.14.2002 -0500, Jeff Lawton wrote: >>>> Yes i looked throught the apcupsd site and most of the documentation is about smart ups and the backups is a dumb one. I checked the bios and everything there is fine. can i access sio0 directly or will that not work? <excerpt> -----Original Message----- <bold>From:</bold> Server Admin [mailto:admin@sage-one.net] <bold>Sent:</bold> Thursday, March 14, 2002 6:42 PM <bold>To:</bold> jeff@idealso.com; linux-user@egr.msu.edu; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG <bold>Subject:</bold> RE: [GLLUG] Re: apcups Jeff: First, have you visited the very thorough website at: http://www.apcupsd.org/ It has almost everything you want to know. BUT, I have tried many different types of UPSes and I could only get the APC Smart-UPS models to actually "talk" to the system and give out data about the battery. If you have the Backups, I think it is among the "dumb UPSes" that are described in the documentation and very limited on the cable signals. If you pull off the cable, you *may* be told it sensed a break, but as far as any useful data...??? Again, I will never buy anything BUT an APC Smart-UPS.... if I want to communicate with it. The so-called "dumb UPSes" are okay IF you have a smart-ups running on the network to monitor things and tell the ones without ability to shut down. At least the dumb ones will sense a power outage and run the machines long enough to save files and shut down.... I may be wrong about your model, but don't think so.... At 05:55 PM 3.14.2002 -0500, Jeff Lawton wrote: >>>> I am using apcupsd from the ports collection on comm 1 and with APC,s serial cable 940-0020C that came with the unit and freebsd 4.5. I have tried both cuaa0 and ttyd0 without success. the ups is feeding a lightbulb and when I unplug the ups I get no messages, any ideals? Here is a copy of the conf file.am I missing something ? ## apcupsd.conf v1.1 ## UPSCABLE 940-0020C UPSTYPE backups DEVICE /dev/ttyd0 LOCKFILE /var/apcups/lock UPSCLASS standalone UPSMODE disable ANNOY 10 ANNOYDELAY 20 <excerpt> -----Original Message----- <bold>From:</bold> linux-user-admin@egr.msu.edu [mailto:linux-user-admin@egr.msu.edu]<bold>On Behalf Of </bold>Server Admin <bold>Sent:</bold> Thursday, March 14, 2002 4:28 PM <bold>To:</bold> jeff@idealso.com; linux-user@egr.msu.edu; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG <bold>Subject:</bold> [GLLUG] Re: apcups Try /dev/ttyd0 At 03:55 PM 3.14.2002 -0500, Jeff Lawton wrote: >>>> I am setting up a APC backups 650 on a freebsd box. It does not seem to be communicating. Is there a different device I should be using other than cuaa0? Jeff Lawton <<<<<<<< .... our website: http://www.sage-one.net/ Best regards, Jack L. Stone Server Admin _______________________________________________ linux-user mailing list linux-user@egr.msu.edu http://www.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user <<<<<<<< .... our website: http://www.sage-one.net/ Best regards, Jack L. Stone Server Admin <<<<<<<< .... our website: http://www.sage-one.net/ Best regards, Jack L. Stone Server Admin <<<<<<<< .... our website: http://www.sage-one.net/ Best regards, Jack L. Stone Server Admin _______________________________________________ linux-user mailing list linux-user@egr.msu.edu http://www.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user <<<<<<<< .... our website: http://www.sage-one.net/ Best regards, Jack L. Stone Server Admin </excerpt></excerpt></excerpt></excerpt></excerpt> <<<<<<<< .... our website: http://www.sage-one.net/ Best regards, Jack L. Stone Server Admin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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