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

[Ronald Reed]

Sent this to just Eric by mistake.

On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 10:43, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> 3.  Why should we care about 'smart' serial UPSes any more?

I for one care. I have smart serial based UPSes around the world and I
use NUT to monitor them and do a graceful shutdown if power does fail.
USB is not the only way to go and I think it would be a bad direction
for this project to go to remove all the serial comms.

There are more than just the casual, home-based user to consider in
this. Corporate users must be considered too. The USB differs for almost
every UPS on the market, and many of the makers of these UPSes, will not
publish the protocols. They want you to use their software, even if
their software doesn't work in your environment or operating system.

As for the contact closure UPS, I think that it needs to remain, as a
final fallback position. If you can't get your UPS to communicate in any
other way, you can probably get it to work as a contact closure UPS at
the very least.

-- 
Ronald Reed - RHCE, GCUX, GCIH
Manager of Computer Operations
ARM SGP ACRF Site
(580)388-4053 Ext. 114
rreed at ops.sgp.arm.gov