[Nut-upsdev] Re: apc-hid tests, ups_status updates

[Peter Selinger]

In my opinion, Alfred is right, this is a bug. Status flags should not
remain set infinitely after the UPS has reset them. Also, the states
CHRG and DISCHRG are not each other's negation. Very conceivably, the
UPS could be charging for 1 second at 12:00, and discharging for 1
second at 3:00. Then the CHRG flag would remain set from 12:00-3:00,
and the DISCHRG flag would remain set for eternity after that.

The situation is similar with OL and OB. There are valid times when
the UPS is neither online nor on battery, for example when it is
switched off. However, newhidups would continue to report the most
recent OL or OB state that it has seen.

I think all the flags should be reported exactly as seen from the UPS,
and drivers should do no meddling "to avoid inconsistencies", except
perhaps to compensate if a specific device is known to be buggy.

Any consistency checks, if they are really necessary, really belong in
upsmon.

If I read the CVS repository correctly, the functions
process_status_info() and ups_status_set() were added between version
1.1.1.1 and 1.1.1.1.8.1, in May 2005. Before that, there were just
calls to the meta-driver's status_set() and status_commit() functions.
However, that earlier solution would also have been buggy: the problem
is that each report that arrives from the UPS might contain only a
subset of the status flags, so one needs to remember them and send all
of them at the same time.

I'll work on a solution. -- Peter

Alfred Ganz wrote:
> 
> Arnaud,
> 
> > first, even if your battery is full, and your ups is online, there is a
> > small amount of power drawn. So having always is CHRG status is normal.
> > In fact, these complementary status are more interesting for higher end
> > UPSs.
> >
> > second, these status need not to be handled like LB, as each one clears the
> > other. While LB had no pending event (!LB) before...
> >
> > or did I get you wrong?
> First, I fully understand that a UPS may report "Charging" because of a
> small amount of power drawn. However, in that case I would expect the UPS
> to report PowerSummary.PresentStatus.Charging with a value of one, and that
> should then show in ups_status.
> 
> Second, I have encountered at least one situation in which the UPS reports
> "OL DISCHRG", but then immediately reports both Discharging and Charging
> as zero, and ups_status is therefore never cleared. I don't know the details
> of timing that lead to this situation, but it reproducibly exist, and I
> think the status should be cleared even though "Charging" never showed.
> 
> I guess my real question would be, are the variables Discharging and
> Charging of the PowerSummary.PresentStatus as reported by the UPS, Boolean
> variables according to the HID prototcol? If they are, then ignoring any
> value reported as zero seems to me to be a mistake.
> 
> Thanks, AG
> 
> -- 
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>    Alfred Ganz					alfred-ganz at agci.com
>    AG Consulting, Inc.				(203) 624-9667
>    440 Prospect Street # 11
>    New Haven, CT 06511
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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