823 lines
33 KiB
Plaintext
823 lines
33 KiB
Plaintext
Desc: Frequently Asked Questions
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File: FAQ
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Date: 20 January 2006
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Auth: Russell Kroll <rkroll@exploits.org>
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Arnaud Quette <aquette.dev@gmail.com>
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: I just upgraded, and ...
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A: You have read UPGRADING in the base directory of the distribution,
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right? If not, go read it now, then come back to this file if your
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question wasn't answered in there.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: upsstats says "Error: can't open template file (upsstats.html)".
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How do I fix this?
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A: Go into your configuration path (/usr/local/ups/etc by default) and
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copy the sample template files over to their real names. The sample
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template files are installed with 'make install-cgi-conf' and can
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also be found inside the source distribution in the conf directory.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: upsmon fails the login and says "username required" now.
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A: Go read the UPGRADING file again.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: My 1.4 CGI programs won't talk to my 2.0 upsd. What should I do?
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A: Upgrade the CGI programs to 2.0. While 1.4 was intended as a
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compatibility tree that used the new protocol by default, the CGI
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programs were not upgraded at the same time. The 1.4 versions
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still use the old REQ protocol, and your 2.0 upsd expects GET.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: I just upgraded from 1.2 and upsmon now fails to start, saying
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"Fatal error: insufficient power configured!". Why?
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A: You didn't read the top of the error, where upsmon says that it
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ignored the invalid MONITOR line because UPS directives now require
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a UPS name. It also means you didn't see the same warning in
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UPGRADING.
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At least you saw this in the FAQ before asking the list.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: My UPS driver now says it's "broken", and won't start. What now?
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Q: My favorite UPS driver disappeared after an upgrade. What now?
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A: Drivers are occasionally removed from the tree if they are no longer
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receiving maintenance, or sometimes renamed to better reflect their
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hardware support scope or replaced by a more generic driver.
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There have been several architectural changes to the driver code
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in recent times, and drivers which were not converted by someone
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are eventually dropped.
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This is called progress. We do this in order to avoid a situation
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where someone believes that a driver is being maintained when it is
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actually rotting slowly in the tree. It also keeps the tree free of
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old compatibility hacks for code that nobody actually uses anyway.
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To get a driver back into current releases, you need to convert it
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yourself or get someone to do it for you. This is not difficult.
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The hardest part of any driver is decoding the protocol, and that's
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already been done in the old version.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: I just upgraded and now I can't talk to older versions.
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A: Version 2.0 can't communicate with anything before 1.4 due to the
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protocol changes. Version 1.4 can communicate with both 2.0 and
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most older versions since it was a transitional release and has
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compatibility code for both protocols.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: My UPS driver program won't work. I'm starting it as root, and root
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owns the device, so what's the problem?
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A: The drivers drop root privileges long before the serial port is
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opened. You'll need to change the permissions on that port so that
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their new user id can access it. Normally this is "nobody", but it
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may be changed at compile-time by using configure --with-user.
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Read the error message. If you have a permissions mismatch, then
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you'll see something like this:
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Network UPS Tools - APC Smart protocol driver 0.60 (1.1.7)
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This program is currently running as youruid (UID 1234)
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/dev/ttyS2 is owned by user root (UID 0), mode 0600
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Change the port name, or fix the permissions or ownership
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of /dev/ttyS2 and try again.
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Unable to open /dev/ttyS2: Permission denied
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Now is a good time to point out that using "nobody" is a bad idea,
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since it's a hack for NFS access. You should create a new role
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account (perhaps called "ups" or "nut"), and use that instead.
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Also, scroll down to the "security domains" question to see an
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even better way of restricting privileged operations. Neither the
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drivers nor upsd ever need root powers, and that answer tells you
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how to make it work.
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A: You can also specify a user with "user=" in the global part of
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ups.conf. Just define it before any of your [sections]:
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user = nut
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[myups]
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driver = mge-shut
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port = /dev/ttyS0
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: upsc, upsstats, and the other clients say "access denied". The device
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communication port (serial, USB or network) permissions are fine, so what
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gives?
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A: In this case, "access denied" means the access to upsd, not the device
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communication port. You're being denied since the system has no
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permission to speak to upsd according to the access controls.
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There can be various reasons. To fix it, check:
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- the LISTEN directive in upsd.conf. It should allow your local or remote
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access method,
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- your firewall rules. Port 3493/tcp must be opened to incoming connexions,
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- your tcp-wrappers configuration (hosts.allow and hosts.deny).
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Refer to the upsd(8) and upsd.conf(5) manpages for more information.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: I have an APC Smart-UPS connected with a grey APC cable and it won't
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work. The Back-UPS type in the genericups driver works but then I
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don't get to use all the nifty features in there. Why doesn't the
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right driver work?
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A: The problem lies in your choice of cable. APC's grey cables
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generally only do "dumb" signalling - very basic yes/no info about
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the battery and line status. While that is sufficient to detect a
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low battery condition while on battery, you miss out on all the
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goodies that you paid for.
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Note that the 940-0095B happens to be a grey cable, but it is actually
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a dual mode cable and can be used in smart mode. If you have
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this cable, you need to edit your ups.conf to look like this:
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[myups]
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driver = apcsmart
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port = /dev/whatever
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cable = 940-0095B
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All other grey cables from APC are assumed to be "dumb".
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If your grey cable isn't the 940-0095B, the solution is to dump that
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cable and find one that supports APC's "smart" signalling. Typically
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these come with the UPS and are black. If your smart cable has
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wandered off, one can be built rather easily with some connectors and
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cable - there's no fancy wiring or resistors.
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See this URL for a handy diagram:
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http://random.networkupstools.org/cables/940-0024C.jpg
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There is also a text version of that diagram in the docs/cables
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directory of the NUT source distribution. Either one should allow
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you to build a good clone of APC's 940-0024C cable.
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There are simpler solutions involving 3 wires that work just fine
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too, but Powerchute won't find the loopback DTR-DCD and RTS-CTS and
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will be annoyed. If you don't ever plan to use Powerchute, 3 wires
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(RxD, TxD, GND) are sufficient.
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It should also be noted that the genericups driver has no way to
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detect the UPS, so it will fire up quite happily if it can open the
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serial port. Merely having it start up is not necessarily an
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indication of success. You should start it and then check the
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status with upsc or similar to be sure that it's reading the
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hardware properly.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why does configure fail to find gd?
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A: Recent versions of gd should be detected automatically through the
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gdlib-config script. Note that gd 2.0.5 through 2.0.7 have an
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unusable script, so upgrade to the newest version if you have one
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of those installed.
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If you're stuck with an older version of gd, you can use it if you
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specify the flags manually. Look in gd's Makefile for "LIBS=",
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then use that value when you call configure:
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./configure --with-gd-libs="<whatever>" --with-cgi
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If you don't have gd's Makefile available for some reason, you're
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in for a lot of trial and error.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why PNG? You used to generate GIF bars with upsimage back in 1998
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or 1999...
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A: http://www.burnallgifs.org/
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why doesn't upsd implement the functionality of upsmon? I have to
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run THREE programs to monitor my UPS!
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A: I try to follow the "tool for the job" philosophy. It may mean
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more programs running, but the flexibility you get is usually
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worth it.
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Yes, the machine with the UPS attached will generally have 3
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processes (driver, upsd, upsmon) running, but this design allows a
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much bigger setup. Imagine a data room with a bunch of machines
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all drawing power from the same UPS. The rest of them just run
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upsmon.
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Besides, if upsmon were rolled into upsd, upsd would get even
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bigger than it is now. You'd have one less process, but the
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RAM consumption would be pretty close to now.
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See data-room.txt for more configuration ideas and explanations.
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A: If this really bothers you, roll up your sleeves and use the
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sockdebug code to write a "upsmon" type program that sits on top of
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the state sockets. It won't work over the network, but it means
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you don't need upsd. It also means only one host can monitor the
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UPS.
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This is also a good option to consider if you can't use networked
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monitoring code for security or safety reasons.
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See ideas.txt for more on this and other related topics.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why isn't upssched part of upsmon?
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A: Most users will never have any reason to use upssched. It's
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complicated, and getting it right for your situation can be tricky.
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Having it live in a separate program saves resources and lets most
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people avoid it completely.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why doesn't upsmon send a SIGPWR signal to init so it can deal with
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power events?
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A: New versions of the init man page taken from the sysvinit package
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are saying that usage of SIGPWR is discouraged, since /dev/initctl
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control channel is the preferred way of communication.
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A: The name of the game is portability. Not everyone's init handles
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that kind of signalling gracefully. What's more, some admins
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might want to do things differently even if they have that kind of
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init running.
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So, to be compatible, upsmon just invokes a shell command. If you
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want to use init's SIGPWR stuff, just put the right "kill" line in
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a shell script and make upsmon call it. Everyone wins.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why can't upsset read my upsset.passwd file?
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A: You have an old version of upsset installed, since the current
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version doesn't use that file. Install a new version and then try
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it again.
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Be sure to secure your CGI directory as instructed in the
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upsset.conf.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why won't bestups talk to my Best Fortress UPS?
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A: There are at least two different protocols being used for hardware
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with very similar names. The bestups driver tends to support the
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units built around the newer "PhoenixTec" protocol.
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Previous releases of this software included a driver called
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bestfortress which supported the older Best hardware. See the
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earlier entries about updating old drivers which have been removed
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from the tree.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: What's this about "data stale"?
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A: It means your UPS driver hasn't updated things in a little while.
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upsd refuses to serve up data that isn't fresh, so you get the
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errors about staleness.
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If this happens to you, make sure your driver is still running.
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Also look at the syslog. Sometimes the driver loses the connection
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to the UPS, and that will also make the data go stale.
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Note: some very slow machines have trouble keeping up with the
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serial ports during periods of extreme load. My old 486 used to
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flip between "stale" and "OK" while running backups.
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If this happens a lot, you might consider cranking up DEADTIME
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in the upsmon.conf to suppress some of the warnings for shorter
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intervals. Use caution when adjusting this number, since it
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directly affects how long you run on battery without knowing
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what's going on with the UPS.
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Note: some drivers occasionally need more time to update than the
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default value of MAXAGE (in upsd.conf) allows. As a result, they
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are temporarily marked stale even though everything is fine. This
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can happen with MGE Ellipse equipment - see the mge-shut man page.
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In such cases, you can raise the value of MAXAGE to avoid these
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warnings; try a value like 25 or 30.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Why do the client programs say "Driver not connected" when I try
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to run them?
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A: This means that upsd can't connect to the driver for some reason.
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Your ups.conf entry might be wrong, or the driver might not be
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running. Maybe your state path is not configured properly.
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Check your syslog. upsd will complain regularly if it can't
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connect to a driver, and it should say why it can't connect.
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Note: if you jumped in with both feet and didn't follow the INSTALL
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document, you probably started upsd by itself. You have to run
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'upsdrvctl start' to start the drivers after configuring ups.conf.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: Everything works perfectly during the shutdown, and the UPS comes
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back on, but my system stays off. What's happening?
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A: Assuming you don't have the problem in the next question, then you
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probably have an ATX motherboard, have APM or ACPI enabled in your
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kernel (assuming Linux here), and are reaching the 'halt' at the
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bottom of your shutdown scripts.
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Your machine obeys and shuts down, and stays down, since it
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remembers the 'last state' when the UPS restarts.
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One solution is to change your shutdown scripts so you never reach
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that point. You *want* the system to die without reaching the
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part where the kernel tells it to shut down. A possible script
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might look like this:
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# other shutdown stuff here (mount -o remount,ro ...)
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if (test -f /etc/killpower)
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then
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/usr/local/ups/bin/upsdrvctl shutdown
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sleep 600 # this should never return
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# uh oh, we never got shut down! (power race?)
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reboot
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fi
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halt -p
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The other solution is to change your BIOS setting to "always power
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on" instead of "last state", assuming that's possible.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: My system has an ATX power supply. It will power off just fine, but
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it doesn't turn back on. What can I do to fix this?
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A: This depends on how clueful your motherboard manufacturer is, and
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isn't a matter of the OS. You have to do one of the following
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things depending on what's supported:
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- Set a jumper on the motherboard that means "return after outage"
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- Set something in the BIOS that says "power up after power failure"
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- Try using something (like a capacitor) across the power button
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to "push" it for you - this might not work if it needs a delay
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- Hack the cable between the power supply and the motherboard to fool
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it into powering up whenever line power is present
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- Teach a monkey to watch the machine and press the power button
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when the outage is over.
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This might work, but it creates high produce bills.
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If you can't use one of the first two options, give the board to
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an enemy. Let them worry about it.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: My PowerMac G4 won't power back up by itself (into Linux) after the
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UPS shuts down. What can I do about this?
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A: This is about the same situation as the ATX question above, only
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worse. Earlier Macs apparently supported a hack where you could
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cat some magic characters at /dev/adb to enable "server mode".
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This would instruct the system to reboot while unattended.
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From Usenet post <6boftzxz51.fsf@ecc-office.sp.cs.cmu.edu>:
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# Send packet over the ADB bus to the PowerMac CUDA chip
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# telling it to reboot automatically when power is restored
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# after a power failure.
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cat /etc/local/autoboot.adb > /dev/adb
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autoboot.adb contains these three bytes (in hex): 01 13 01
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Unfortunately, the hardware has evolved and there is no good
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equivalent for this hack on today's systems.
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If you find out how to do this, please send me some mail, since
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this affects one of my systems and my stop-gap solution is getting
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cranky.
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Note: this question has been in the FAQ for over a year and
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there's still no answer. Let me guess: everyone who runs a server
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on Mac hardware has a team of trained monkeys, and feeds them
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by growing bananas in the tropical environment formed by waste heat
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from the equipment.
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The rest of us are still waiting for the answer. Booting into the
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Mac OS to frob the "file server" panel is not an acceptable
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solution.
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A: If you're on OS X, this is relatively simple to fix. Go to system
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preferences, click on energy saver, click on the options tab, check
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"Restart automatically after a power failure".
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If you're on some other OS, hope they've figured out how to duplicate
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the above in a non-simian manner.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: I want to keep the drivers and upsd in their own security domains.
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How can this be accomplished?
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A: Using a few role accounts and a common group, you can limit access
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to resources such as the serial port(s) leading to the UPS
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hardware.
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This is just an example. Change the values to suit your systems.
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Create a user called 'nutdev' and another called 'nutsrv'. Put
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them both in a group called 'nut'.
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Change the owner of any serial ports that will be used to nutdev,
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and set the mode to 0600. Then change the ownership of your state
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directory (usually /var/state/ups) to nutdev.nut.
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For my development system this yields the following /dev entries:
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0 crw------- 1 nutdev tty 4, 64 Sep 3 17:11 /dev/ttyS0
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0 crw------- 1 nutdev tty 4, 65 Sep 3 17:11 /dev/ttyS1
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Switch to root, then start the drivers:
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# /usr/local/ups/bin/upsdrvctl -u nutdev start
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The listing for /var/state/ups then looks like this:
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4 drwxrwx--- 2 nutdev nut 4096 Aug 20 18:37 .
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4 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 14 21:20 ..
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4 srw-rw---- 1 nutdev nut 0 Sep 3 17:10 apcsmart-ttyS0
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4 srw-rw---- 1 nutdev nut 0 Sep 3 17:10 megatec-ttyS1
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You may have to remove old socket or state files first if you are
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changing to this security scheme from an older version. The drivers
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will create new files with the right owners and modes.
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Note that /var/state/ups is group writable since upsd will
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place the upsd.pid file here.
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You may have to change the groups of upsd.conf and upsd.users to
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make them readable. These files should not be owned by nutsrv,
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since someone could compromise the daemon and change the config
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files. Instead, put nutsrv in a group ("nut" in this example), then
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make the files owned by root.nut, with mode 0640.
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Once the config files are ready, start upsd:
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# /usr/local/ups/sbin/upsd -u nutsrv
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Check your syslog to be sure everything's happy, then be sure to
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update your startup scripts so it uses this procedure on your next
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boot.
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If you like this, you'll probably also find the chroot process to
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be useful and interesting. See chroot.txt for more details.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q: What's the point of that 'security domains' concept above?
|
|
|
|
A: The point is limiting your losses. If someone should happen to
|
|
break into upsd in that environment, they should only gain access
|
|
to that one user account. Direct access to the serial device is
|
|
not possible, since that is owned by another user.
|
|
|
|
There is also the possibility of running the drivers and upsd in a
|
|
chroot jail. See the chroot.txt provided in the source
|
|
distribution for an example implementation.
|
|
|
|
Why give would-be vandals any sort of help?
|
|
|
|
Put it this way - I *wrote* good chunks of this stuff, and I still
|
|
run the programs this way locally. You should definitely consider
|
|
using this technique.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: How can I make upsmon shut down my system after some fixed interval?
|
|
|
|
A: You probably don't want to do this, since it doesn't maximize your
|
|
runtime on battery. Assuming you have a good reason for it (see
|
|
the next entry), then look at upssched.txt or the upssched man
|
|
page for some ideas.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: Why doesn't upsmon shut down my system? I pulled the plug and nothing
|
|
happened.
|
|
|
|
A: Wait. upsmon doesn't consider a UPS to be critical until it's both
|
|
'on battery' and 'low battery' at the same time. This is by design.
|
|
Nearly every UPS supports the notion of detecting the low battery
|
|
all by itself. When the voltage drops below a certain point, it
|
|
_will_ let you know about it.
|
|
|
|
If your system has a really complicated shutdown procedure, you
|
|
might need to shut down before the UPS raises the low battery flag.
|
|
For most users, however, the default behavior is adequate.
|
|
|
|
Ask yourself this: why buy a nice big UPS with the matching battery
|
|
and corresponding runtime and then shutdown early? If anything, I'd
|
|
rather have a few more minutes running on battery during which the
|
|
power might return. Once the power's back, it's business as usual
|
|
with no visible interruption in service.
|
|
|
|
If you purposely shut down early, you guarantee an interruption in
|
|
service by bringing down the box.
|
|
|
|
See upssched.txt for information on how you can shutdown early if
|
|
this is what you really want to do.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: The CGI programs report "access to that host is not authorized" -
|
|
what's going on?
|
|
|
|
A: Those programs need to see a host in your hosts.conf before they
|
|
will attempt communications. This keeps people from feeding it
|
|
random "host=" settings, which would annoy others with outgoing
|
|
connection attempts from your system.
|
|
|
|
If your hosts.conf turns out to be configured correctly with
|
|
MONITOR entries and all that, check the permissions. Your web
|
|
server may be running the CGI programs as a user that can't read
|
|
the file.
|
|
|
|
If you run your web server in a chroot jail, make sure the programs
|
|
can still read hosts.conf. You may have to copy it into the jail
|
|
for this to work. If you do that, make sure it's not writable by
|
|
any of the user accounts which run inside the jail.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: upsd is running, so why can't I connect to it?
|
|
|
|
A: Assuming you haven't changed the TCP port number on the command line
|
|
or at compile-time, then you probably have some sort of firewall
|
|
blocking the connection.
|
|
|
|
upsd listens on TCP port 3493 by default.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: How do you make upsmon reload the config file?
|
|
|
|
Q: How do you make upsd reload the config file?
|
|
|
|
A: Either find the pid of the background process and send it a SIGHUP,
|
|
or just start it again with '-c reload'.
|
|
|
|
If you send the signals yourself instead of using -c, be sure you
|
|
hit the right process. There are usually two upsmons, and you
|
|
should only send signals to one of them. To be safe, read the pid
|
|
file.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: I just bought a new WhizBang UPS that has a USB connector. How do
|
|
I monitor it?
|
|
|
|
A: There are several driver to support USB models.
|
|
|
|
- usbhid-ups supports various manufacturers complying to the HID standard,
|
|
- tripplite_usb supports various Tripp-Lite units,
|
|
- bcmxcp_usb supports various Powerware units.
|
|
|
|
Refer to the "driver-name" (8) manpage for more information.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: What is this usbhid-ups (formerly newhidups) about?
|
|
|
|
A: The basic USB UPS support was done until NUT 2.2 using hidups. To allow
|
|
a wider support accross platforms for USB/HID compliant devices,
|
|
usbhid-ups driver uses libusb (which is available for a wide range of
|
|
operating systems) and libhid (currently, a modified internal version
|
|
of it).
|
|
|
|
As of NUT 2.2, usbhid-ups completely replaces the legacy hidups driver
|
|
and provide support for various manufacturers. At that time, it will
|
|
be renamed to usbhid-ups.
|
|
|
|
usbhid-ups is built automatically if possible (libusb development files
|
|
need to be installed) and installed by the "make install" command.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: Why doesn't my package work?
|
|
|
|
Q: I can't run this because there's no package for it. Why isn't this
|
|
in a package yet?
|
|
|
|
A: Sorry, can't help you there. All official releases are source code
|
|
and are posted on http://www.networkupstools.org/ along with PGP
|
|
signatures for verification.
|
|
|
|
This means all packages have been built by a third party. If you
|
|
have an issue that's related to packaging, you will need to seek
|
|
help with whoever built it for you.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: Why are there two copies of upsmon running?
|
|
|
|
A: It's not really two complete copies if your OS forks efficiently.
|
|
|
|
By default, upsmon runs most of the grunt work as an unprivileged
|
|
user and keeps a stub process around with root powers that can
|
|
only shut down the system when necessary. This should make it much
|
|
harder to gain root in the event a hole is ever discovered in
|
|
upsmon.
|
|
|
|
If this really bothers you and you like running lots of code as
|
|
root, start upsmon with -p and it will go back to being one big
|
|
process. This is not recommended, so don't blame me if something
|
|
bad happens in this mode.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: I have <some problem> with <some old version> ...
|
|
|
|
A: Get the latest stable release, and see if it still happens. If it
|
|
goes away, it means someone else reported it and got it fixed a
|
|
long time ago.
|
|
|
|
If that doesn't work, try the latest development version.
|
|
|
|
If your problem is STILL there, then contact the mailing lists.
|
|
|
|
Hint: check the release date on the version you have. If it's more
|
|
than about 6 months old, there's probably a newer stable tree
|
|
version out there.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: Do you have to use a serial connection to monitor the UPS?
|
|
What about direct network connections (SNMP or otherwise)?
|
|
|
|
A: No. NUT currently support USB communication through usbhid-ups,
|
|
tripplite_usb and bcmxcp_usb, and SNMP communication through snmp-ups.
|
|
|
|
Any time there is a gap in features, it's usually because the
|
|
group of people who own that hardware and the group of people who
|
|
write code don't overlap. The fix is to make them overlap -
|
|
turn an owner into a developer or vice-versa.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: What happened to the patch I sent?
|
|
|
|
A: If a release goes by and your patch hasn't been included, it was
|
|
probably dropped. There can be a lot of patches waiting for
|
|
inclusion at some points, and occasionally some have to be
|
|
rejected.
|
|
|
|
Design issues or severe coding style problems can be the reason
|
|
for this. I try to point out what the problems are, but there are
|
|
limits. See developers.txt for some pointers on submitting
|
|
patches.
|
|
|
|
Sometimes patches are put on hold due to a feature freeze. If it
|
|
doesn't show up once the new version opens up, send it again.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: I'm not much of a programmer. How can I help?
|
|
|
|
A: There's always work to be done outside of the realm of code bashing.
|
|
Documentation might not always be so clear. A user's perspective
|
|
is sometimes needed to appreciate this. Bug reports on a project's
|
|
documentation are just as valuable as those for the actual source.
|
|
|
|
Fielding questions on the mailing lists is also helpful. This
|
|
lets other people to focus on coding issues while allowing the
|
|
original poster to get some information at the same time. It's
|
|
quite a relief to open that mailbox and find that someone else
|
|
has already handled it successfully.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: I replaced the battery in my APC Smart-UPS and now it thinks the
|
|
battery is low all the time. How do you fix this?
|
|
|
|
Q: My APC UPS keeps reporting "OL LB", even after it's been charging
|
|
for many hours. What can I do about this?
|
|
|
|
A: This happened to me, and some other people too. The combination of
|
|
our experiences should prove useful to you.
|
|
|
|
First, you need to realize that the UPS apparently stores data about
|
|
the battery, load, and runtime. After replacing the battery, it
|
|
needs to be clued in to the new situation. If the traditional
|
|
runtime calibration doesn't work, you have to try something a
|
|
little more drastic.
|
|
|
|
You need to *completely* drain the UPS while it has a good ground.
|
|
This means you can't just pull the plug. You also have to
|
|
disconnect it from the computer so this software won't shut it
|
|
down.
|
|
|
|
The easiest way to do this is to first unplug your computer(s) from
|
|
it, and plug in a token load like a lamp. Also, move the UPS to a
|
|
power strip that doesn't switch the ground line or an outlet that
|
|
you can switch off at your panel.
|
|
|
|
Once the UPS is up at 100% charge (this is important), disconnect
|
|
the power. It _must_ remain connected to the ground, or the
|
|
results may not be accurate. Ignore the sounds it makes, and go
|
|
away until it's done. Don't do anything to the front panel while
|
|
this is happening.
|
|
|
|
After all of this, put things back the way they should be and let
|
|
it charge up. You should find that it again gives reasonable
|
|
values and behavior, as it was when it was new.
|
|
|
|
Thanks to Matthew Dharm for helping me nail down this procedure.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: multimon.cgi seems to be stuck at an old version, even though I
|
|
just installed a new one.
|
|
|
|
A: multimon was removed during the 1.1 development cycle. upsstats
|
|
now does everything it used to do, and then some. You should just
|
|
delete those files and start using upsstats directly.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: OK, I switched to upsstats. Now it's giving me Celsius. I like
|
|
Fahrenheit. Where's the config file to switch it back?
|
|
|
|
A: Temperature scales are handled by the template files, so edit your
|
|
upsstats.html and change it from TEMPC to TEMPF.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: Why is the mailing list ignoring me?
|
|
|
|
A: You probably asked a question that's answered in this FAQ or
|
|
somewhere else in the documentation and nobody wants to quote it
|
|
for you.
|
|
|
|
Convincing the other subscribers that you've actually read down this
|
|
far might be useful. You might mention "queequeg" for better results.
|
|
|
|
This URL may also be helpful:
|
|
|
|
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: I found some information about another kind of UPS protocol you
|
|
don't support yet, but I don't know what to do with it. Can you
|
|
help?
|
|
|
|
A: If you're not a programmer, you can still help others by making
|
|
that protocol available. You might host the document somewhere and
|
|
send the URL to one of the mailing lists.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Q: How can you answer questions to situations that nobody's encountered
|
|
yet? Isn't this a frequently asked questions file?
|
|
|
|
A: Magic.
|
|
|
|
A: It's both that and a frequently *anticipated* questions file, too.
|
|
|
|
The idea is to write it up in here so that nobody asks the mailing
|
|
list when it finally does get released.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|