Hi Michal,<br><br>I'm cc'ing the NUT development mailing list. you should also subscribe to it.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2010/10/28 Michal Soltys<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Greetings<br>
<br>
I have loads of relatively old smart upses that I currently control using a bit patched version of apcupsd - the reason for those patches is the age of the upses - roughly 10 years old+, which are can be a bit tricky to control. From issues related to them:<br>
<br>
- no eeprom programming or calibration. So - no grace periods or minimal battery level to power up<br>
- @000 command is no-op - the only effect of it is happy led flashing<br>
- @nnn will power up the ups right after 6*nnn minutes unconditionally (regardless if the power returned or not - modern units are smarter, and the delay is counted from power's return + eeprom preprogrammed delay)<br>
- S as usual works only when on batteries, but with no eeprom programmed delays, the ups is up as soon as the power is back<br>
- low power signal (both on old and new units) is somewhat unreliable as far as APC upses go - and in my experience it's far better to just monitor remaining time and/or current battery level and issue shutdown when necessary (so in context of nut's driver - provide "custom" LB status)<br>
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Anyway, I submitted the patches to apcupsd, but while some of them might go into upstream (ignore low battery knob) other ones (knobs to control manual delays and selection of shutdown methods) are for now considered too complex for users (?).<br>
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Having peeked into nut sources, my question thus is: would a patch adding either a new driver (probably far better option) or adding a set of options to existing apcsmart driver (worse option) be acceptable ? The features that would be provided:<br>
<br>
- precise shutdown method control (S, @, K, +potential hacks)<br>
- allow supplying @'s delay<br>
- ignore or honor ups-sent low batt signal<br>
- using battery level and/or time as calculated by ups to decide on shutdown moment (so kinda provide "custom" LB info) - with levels controlled by user<br>
- anything else needed<br>
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As you can see, the general functionality would look similar to apcupsd's smart part.<br>
<br>
I don't know when/if I have time to add it, but nut's code looks pretty clean + there's good amount of docs, so it should be doable in not too distant future and in reasonable timeframe.<br>
<br>
Either way, is there a chance for future upstream-inclusion of such driver ?<br></blockquote><div> <br>sure, more than a chance ;-)<br>you will have to follow the NUT developer guide (<a href="http://new.networkupstools.org/developer-guide.html">http://new.networkupstools.org/developer-guide.html</a>) chapters 3 and 4.<br>
the preferred way is to enhance apcsmart, in a way that doesn't introduce possible regressions on working models.<br>thus, in case you doubt, prefer to create a driver option to enable it.<br>you will get help by posting your contributions and asking for comments on the NUT development mailing list.<br>
<br></div></div>cheers,<br clear="all">Arnaud<br>-- <br>Linux / Unix Expert R&D - Eaton - <a href="http://powerquality.eaton.com">http://powerquality.eaton.com</a><br>Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - <a href="http://www.networkupstools.org/">http://www.networkupstools.org/</a><br>
Debian Developer - <a href="http://www.debian.org">http://www.debian.org</a><br>Free Software Developer - <a href="http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/">http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/</a><br><br>