[Nut-upsdev] Asking hard questions about the NUT architecture

[Doug Reynolds]

Eric S. Raymond wrote:
 
> Size of the potential userbases.  For every large-system sysadmin who
> actually needs a setup like that, I would be astonished if there were
> fewer than a hundred single-UPS/single-system setups out there.  Just
> looking at the piles of consumer-grade USB-UPS boxes at Computer
> Center told me that --  the store expects to sell those in *volume*.

Just for the record, I administer two of the boxes, one with a RS232 (cyberpower) and one with a USB (APC) ups.  Both boxes use nut to monitor the upses, and to perform a shutdown on a FreeBSD box.     

> That'd be a heckuva start. I'm actually kind of shocked to learn that
> BSD has such poor hardening.  I guess I still had some lingering belief
> in the BSD propaganda about their kernel being better architected. 

Their kernel _is_ better "architected", the file system just isn't as "hardened."

Linux seems like it is more after the userland former Windows people.  *bsd is more designed as a server platform.  Servers have upses.  Servers need to be running whether the power is on or off.  So, for the record, even if the linuxes will shut down and write the cache to the disk instantaneously as my power blinks off for 5 minutes, I'd really rather have my systems up on battery for 5 minutes.