How can something so easy be so difficult

StefanTh · ‎2022-05-23

Why is it so difficult to get a UPS and a couple servers to work together?

We have a Smart-UPS (SRT 10000) with web-gui and Ethernet connected to the rack's main switch.

We have a couple servers with Ubuntu in the rack

The UPS is sending status packages, which are visible on the net, according to the format MASTATUS<body>....</body> every 20 seconds or so

What we want: if the battery goes down under 20% or if it is 10% left on the time we want the servers to shutdown gracefully.

This simple task seems to be impossible to do.

----

aopcupsd:

No, not working because the UPS seems to have changed the protocol to MASTATUS<body>....</body> which apcupsd can not handle correctly.

Powerchute:

No, it is only rpm packages (that is for red hat or SuSe)

Convert rpm into .deb? Well almost, because some shebang missing for !/bin/bash, there are errors about [[ statements in shell files etc.

Force convert it into .deb, do the installation and ignoring the warnings about [[

Will it work??? Of course not, when setting up powerchute (which of course is not named powerchute anymore but pcbeagent instead .....) the pcbeagent can only handle usb/serial cables during the setup.

NUT:

Have not even tried, when both apcupsd and Schneiders own software (powerchute/pcbeagent) fail this simple use case I do not even want to test,

It astonish me that that these things do not work out of the box or in a very simple way.

Schneider change the broadcast format so apcupsd no longer work, why ?

Schnedier make the software Powerchute which it is not, it is actually called pcbeagent, why ?

Why can not pcbeagent handle an Ethernet connection to the UPS during setup, why does it insist on usb/serial?

95% of the use cases of UPS's are very very very simple

Main power loss -> switch to battery

Before running out of battery -> graceful shutdown.

Regards

BillP · ‎2022-05-24

@StefanTh

The UPS ships with a built-in network management card (NMC) compatible with PowerChute Network Shutdown. PowerChute Network Shutdown can be configured to listen to the NMC and will command the OS/servers down when runtime falls below X time.

Here is a link to the PowerChute web page to download the software free of charge.

https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/PowerChute-Network-Shutdown-v4-4-1-64-bit-systems-only-/P-SF...

The installation and user's guides will be found at the same link.

See Answer In Context

BillP · ‎2022-05-24

@StefanTh

The UPS ships with a built-in network management card (NMC) compatible with PowerChute Network Shutdown. PowerChute Network Shutdown can be configured to listen to the NMC and will command the OS/servers down when runtime falls below X time.

Here is a link to the PowerChute web page to download the software free of charge.

https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/PowerChute-Network-Shutdown-v4-4-1-64-bit-systems-only-/P-SF...

The installation and user's guides will be found at the same link.

StefanTh · ‎2022-05-25

Hi

> PowerChute Network Shutdown

Yes, PCNS seems to work, thanks a lot.

Notice that on mySchneider Home (se.com)

Only version 4.2 and 4.3 is linked under "firmware", not 4.4 (4.3 is only 32 bit Linux variant)

However it seems that 4.4 works on ubuntu, I will carry out some tests

Regards