[GLLUG] Re: apcupsd

Fri, 15 Mar 2002 09:48:39 -0600

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

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