[Nut-upsuser] Belkin USB UPSes

[Arnaud Quette]

2007/5/25, Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com>:
> Arnaud Quette <aquette.dev at gmail.com>:
> > long time no see,
>
> Hm? We've met before?  Sorry, I'm not recalling it.

no matter. iirc, this was on some nut (and debian) manpage fixes and
some bug hunting ; and possibly some hwdb discussion (along with
RMS)... but I may mix with some other things. and

> > 2007/5/17, Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com>:
> > >I just bought a pair of Belkin USB UPSes -- F6C1200-UNV and F6C550-AVR --
> >
> > you might have preferred a FLOSS friendly UPS, but I know you prefer
> > the hard way ;-)
>
> No, I just didn't know which ones were FLOSS-friendly

http://eu1.networkupstools.org/acknowledgements.html

this is part of an hwdb project I'd like to push (with Debian, Ubuntu,
FreeDesktop.org and maybe Linspire ;-) in order to inform FLOSS users
of the right choice to make (ie the manufacturers that generally
support FLOSS) when buying devices.

but before going on that point, I need to empty my tasks stack from
some huge ones... and not only on NUT
(https://launchpad.net/~umc-team)

> when I was at the
> computer store. :-)  I picked the Belkins because I liked their case-design
> hack of putting the plugs on the top surface, which is more accessible
> than the uusual rear-of-the-unit placement.
>
> In any case, the device more or less seems to work with the megatec_usb
> driver.  Or it did, anyway -- with latest trunk it's not finding the USB
> device.

I just saw you find the problem...

> System log has many entries that say:
>
> May 24 12:18:37 snark kernel: [136718.407859] usb 3-2: usbfs: process 26061 (megatec_usb) did not claim interface 0 before use
>
> How do I troubleshoot this?

not a big trouble, but we are still having sometime such msg.
this claiming lies in drivers/libusb.c->libusb_open()
Is it easily reproducible?

> By the way, see where it says "2.1.0 (916M)" there?  Thst's my patch to include
> SVN revision in the version string operating.  As soon as I actually get
> nut working again, I'll ship it to you.

I saw your post but have not yet looked at it.

> > As a side note, I'm working on integrating NUT USB driver with HAL.
> > A deb called nut-hal-drivers is also generated. Ping me for more info
> > if needed, I'm sure you'll be fond of the ease of use of this
> > "feature".
>
> Maybe.  Are you going to fix things so that nut is inoked and automatically
> configures itself when a user plugs in a USB UPS?  Because if not, I have some
> ideas and even code to contribute towards that.  I made it happpen in gpsd.

this is the whole point: you don't have to configure anything, and the
driver (aka hal addon) is loaded automagically when the device
plugged. Then the guys (like gnome-power-mgr) is also poping auto ...
I've had an intern last year to work on configuration things that
would have been useful, but I'll now leave the "autoconfig upon USB
device detection" down. HAL is the clear path and is supported by all
the NUT USB supported platform (linux, *bsd, solaris)

I know you're seeking for usability and easiness, so you might be
interested in giving a try!

Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert - MGE UPS SYSTEMS - R&D Dpt
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://people.debian.org/~aquette/
OpenSource Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/