From owner-freebsd-stable  Tue Sep 26 12: 6:15 2000
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To: dhesi@rahul.net (Rahul Dhesi)
Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Freebsd vs. UPS 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 26 Sep 2000 10:25:54 PDT."
             <20000926172554.BF7777DF6@yellow.rahul.net> 
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 13:05:48 -0600
From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ab.ca>
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>>>>> "Rahul" == Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@rahul.net> writes:

    Rahul> I recommend against APC UPSs for three reasons: short
    Rahul> battery life, poor quality control (sometimes they fail
    Rahul> after 2-3 months of use), and refusal to provide
    Rahul> specifications for control of the UPS (thus no support for
    Rahul> open software).

    Rahul> In this world of open software, the third factor above
    Rahul> should be considered very strongly.  -- Rahul

Work around them. The serial port protocols seem to be pretty simple. One
option is to put a BSD box in between the UPS and whatever runs their
proprietary software. E.g. UPS serial port connects to BSD ttyd0, machine
with UPS software connects to BSD ttyd1. BSD box runs a simple full-duplex
byte copy program to connect the two ttys. You run watch(8) against the tty
devices to snoop the protocol, reverse engineer, document, then post to
the net.

--lyndon


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