[Nut-upsdev] Proposed new documentation "Configuration Examples"

[Tim Dawson]

Allow me to suggest a couple more sample configs: 1) Server as UPS controller with clients that are also on UPS, considering shutdown sequencing and 2) Multi power supply server with multiple UPS (with or without clients).

- Tim

On June 13, 2017 10:01:54 PM CDT, Charles Lepple <clepple at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Jun 9, 2017, at 10:16 AM, Roger Price wrote:
>> 
>> Most of the questions asked in the nut-user mailing list seem to me
>to be either erudite technical discussion of new and exotic UPS units,
>or n00b questions of the style "I have this old UPS so I installed NUT
>but it didn't work".
>> 
>> NUT is thoroughly documented with man pages and User Manual, but from
>my own experience it is not easy for Joe N00b to know what a working
>setup should look like in his case.
>
>To be honest, I am not sure that documenting these configurations will
>reduce the number of questions. Many people have preconceived notions
>of what NUT should do, based on what their current OS or
>vendor-provided software does (e.g. shut down after N minutes on
>battery). Perhaps the solution is to help map their configurations to
>NUT equivalents?
>
>> To address this, I propose a "NUT configuration for Noobs" which is
>called "Configuration Examples".  A 27 page PDF file formatted to be
>read on a 17 inch or bigger monitor using for example muPDF or evince. 
>It could be printed, but fewer people have printers these days.
>> 
>> The configurations are:
>> 
>> 1. Simple server with no local users
>> 2. Workstation with local users (solves the wall problem)
>> 3. Workstations share a UPS
>> 4. Workstation with a heartbeat
>> 5. Workstation with timed shutdown
>> 6. Workstation with additional equipment
>> 
>> The first version is at http://rogerprice.org/NUT/ConfigExamples.pdf
>Before I announce this in the nut-user mailing list, any comments,
>especially on the choice of configurations, are very welcome.
>
>Before I get into specifics, I would like to mention that there is a
>lot of useful content in this document, and it seems like a good
>companion to the NUT documentation.
>
>With that in mind, please understand that this criticism is meant to be
>constructive, although I do not have ready answers for all of these
>points.
>
>I agree that printers are becoming less and less common. However, I am
>not sure that a two-column format with little space and no rule between
>the columns is the best choice for screen display. Many PDF viewers can
>display two pages side-by-side, and will do so with a dark border
>around each page. There is probably a middle ground between these
>dimensions and the ones used in the AsciiDoc-generated PDFs.
>
>There are recommendations out there concerning maximum line lengths for
>readability, and I think they are closer to 65 characters. The 90-100
>character lines seem to me to be harder to read, especially with the
>close column spacing.
>
>I think color can be useful in diagrams, but it can be distracting in
>running text. Also, red/green colorblindness is probably common enough
>to consider choosing another color for either upsd or upsmon.
>
>The CHRG and DISCHRG status flags are probably confusing for an
>entry-level text, and are more informational than the critical OL/OB/LB
>flags. Some models do not indicate CHRG or DISCHRG, and others will
>omit CHRG if they are OL but not topping off the battery.
>
>On page 5 (right column), it mentions that
>/usr/lib/systemd/system-shutdown is for user scripts, and
>/lib/systemd/system-shutdown is for system scripts. Should the first be
>/etc/systemd/... or /usr/local/systemd/... ?
>
>You have probably noticed that I often link to a specific section of
>the NUT HTML documentation. I appreciate that you have written this in
>a tutorial format rather than as a reference, but you may still need to
>point users to a specific location, and page numbers are not stable
>over time (and neither are section numbers).
>
>Also, some of the internal references to lines and sections do not seem
>to be links. (This might be my web browser and PDF reader combination,
>but usually the table-of-contents links work.)
>
>The last one is a bit pedantic, but the K&R format of the source code
>is probably not important enough to mention in the introduction.
>Usually "K&R" refers to code that will not compile without adjustment
>in a C89-compliant (or later) compiler.
>
>I am also curious whether you tried to edit any of the existing NUT
>documentation before creating a new document. We chose AsciiDoc in part
>because it should not be as much of a burden as other markup formats to
>read or write, and because it offers several output formats. If it
>turns out to be a deterrent to contributions, that is something we
>should address. I am concerned about the maintainability of several
>documents going forward, and I (selfishly, perhaps) would appreciate
>more help on the core NUT documentation. Your thoughts on this would be
>appreciated.
>_______________________________________________
>Nut-upsdev mailing list
>Nut-upsdev at lists.alioth.debian.org
>http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nut-upsdev

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/nut-upsdev/attachments/20170613/da211da1/attachment.html>