[Nut-upsdev] New questions

[Charles Lepple]

On Jul 14, 2015, at 12:50 PM, john hart <jsamcr at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Here is the previous email that I sent directly to Charles Lepple.  I am now sending to the correct email with cc to Charles.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> I am looking at, and trying to understand the rest of the conf files.  But first want to ask
> about something from this message:
> [CODE]
> root at debian:/home/john# upsdrvctl start
> Network UPS Tools - UPS driver controller 2.7.2
> Network UPS Tools - Megatec/Q1 protocol USB driver 0.11 (2.7.2)
> Supported UPS detected with megatec protocol
> Vendor information unavailable
> No values provided for battery high/low voltages in ups.conf
> 
> Using 'guestimation' (low: 10.400000, high: 13.000000)!
> Battery runtime will not be calculated (runtimecal not set)
> [CODE]
> 
> I recall, from past experience with this UPS, that the nominal voltage is around 13.1 .  I have 
> no idea what the low voltage should be, but 10.4 is probably okay. So, would I add the following 
> in the ups.conf 
> 
> [CODE]
> default.battery.voltage.high = 13.5
> default.battery.voltage.low = 10.4
> default.battery.voltage.nominal = 13.1
> [CODE]

As mentioned in the man page <http://www.networkupstools.org/docs/man/blazer_usb.html>, the nominal voltage is not used in the charge calculation.

Generally, "nominal" battery voltage is a round number, such as 12V (even though the actual voltage is usually higher).

The man page also defines battery.voltage.high as the "Maximum battery voltage that is reached after about 12 to 24 hours charging", and battery.voltage.low as "Minimum battery voltage just before the UPS automatically shuts down".

Your use of the "default." prefix in ups.conf seems correct, but I would monitor the battery voltage to get the actual values for high and low. Plus, you would need to specify runtimecal, which requires some testing at different load levels.

All of this is for estimating the percent charge, though. The internal UPS low battery (LB) signal does not depend on this.

> Now, on to the  'upsmon.conf'  file.  I am a bit lost as to what all is required in this file.

It depends on what you are trying to do. The configuration is a lot simpler if you just want to shut down when LB is asserted by the UPS - in that case you do not need upssched.

>  Looking
> at just the first part of the example from Price, I see :
> 
> [CODE]
> # /etc/ups/upsmon.conf
>  MONITOR Eaton-66781 at localhost 1 upsmaster sekret master
>  MINSUPPLIES 1
>  SHUTDOWNCMD "/sbin/shutdown -h +0"
>  NOTIFYCMD /usr/sbin/upssched
>  POLLFREQ 5
>  POLLFREQALERT 5
>  HOSTSYNC 15
>  DEADTIME 15
>  POWERDOWNFLAG /etc/killpower
> [CODE]
> 
> I have modified the MONITOR line as appropriate for my system but wonder about a couple
> of entries.  The referenced binary '/usr/sbin/upssched' appears to be in '/sbin' not '/usr/sbin' .
> Is that the '/sbin/upssched' the correct file to use ?

Correct, that is the closest match out of "dpkg --search upssched".

>  Also, the '/etc/killpower'  does not appear
> anywhere in my system.  I did a 'locate killpower' and came up empty .  I now see that the
> killpower is generated automatically (I think).

Correct, as mentioned in the upsmon.conf man page: "upsmon creates this file when running in master mode when the UPS needs to be powered off. You should check for this file in your shutdown scripts and call upsdrvctl shutdown if it exists."

> Also, do I need all of the NOTIFYMSG and NOTIFYFLAG things?   I guess I am looking to do
> the minimum just to get things running.  I assume I can modify things later as I learn enough
> to do so correctly.  Looks like the NOTIFYMSG will send a message to a terminal. Is that correct?

NOTIFYMSG is the format string for the message that gets sent out to the various notification systems. The part that makes it go to the terminal is the WALL flag on the NOTIFYFLAG line (for each type of event).

The default is WALL+SYSLOG, so if you don't want terminal messages, you would specify just SYSLOG for those events.

-- 
Charles Lepple
clepple at gmail