[Nut-upsdev] Adding PDU support to NUT

[Arnaud Quette]

I've recently been working a bit on adding PDU
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_distribution_unit) support in NUT.
Some of you might have seen the Powerman thread, which also deals with
adding more PDUs support:
http://powerman.sourceforge.net/supported.html

The result is that we now have support for 2 Eaton | Powerware ePDUs
(Managed and Monitored iirc, check http://www.epdu.com).
I plan on adding the 2 other models soon.
It is using snmp-ups and I've attached an upsc/upscmd output of the
managed unit for info.
The patch isn't commited yet, but it's limited to adding a xx-mib.h
file, and some doc update. I've also switched to a 2 decimal
resolution in snmp-ups.

The things to be noticed are:
- since NUT is UPS centric, the ups collection doesn't fit for the
purpose (ups.status most of all)
- a new collection ("device") has to be created, to make NUT more generic.
This would consist of the following generic / common data extracted
from the ups collection:
       device.model
       device.mfr
       device.serial
       device.type (while keeping ups.status for single / three phase)
and possibly
       device.id
       device.firmware
       device.temperature

    * the outlet collection has to be extended with the following data:
       outlet.n.current: Current (milliamps RMS)
       outlet.n.current.maximum: Maximum seen current (milliamps RMS)
       outlet.n.realpower: Current value of real power (Watts)
       outlet.n.voltage: Voltage (V)
       outlet.n.powerfactor: Power Factor (dimensionless value between
0.00 and 1.00)
       outlet.n.power: Apparent power (VA)

- status_{}() needs only to process when device.type=ups


More generally, I think that NUT is able to handle the smart power
devices that will appear in the future.
And the above change will help in going in that direction.

comments / feedback?

Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert R&D - MGE Office Protection Systems - http://www.mgeops.com
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://people.debian.org/~aquette/
Free Software Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/
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