[Nut-upsuser] New batteries and another attempt to get nut running

[Charles Lepple]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 2:23 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> Hi Charles; I hope this finds you well.

Hi Gene,

> Here is dmesg output:
> gene at coyote:~$ dmesg |grep Belkin
> [    3.315667] usb 2-3: Product: Belkin UPS
> [    3.315669] usb 2-3: Manufacturer: Belkin
> [    4.084258] generic-usb 0003:050D:0751.0009: hiddev0,hidraw4: USB HID v1.11 Device [Belkin  Belkin UPS] on usb-0000:00:02.0-3/input
>
> I have configured it to use this generic-usb,

Configured NUT, udev, or the kernel?

(For most Linux distributions on PC hardware, the stock kernel should
work, since NUT can kick out the hiddev and hidraw drivers at
runtime.)

> and probably made it less
> secure by adding myself to /etc/group/nut and changing many of the perms
> to 0660 or 0664 so I can edit this stuff as me.  Those of course are fixable
> later if needed.  But I use dd-wrt here, and no one has ever succeeded in
> getting past it to do anything but look and dl from my web page (in sig)

Just to be clear, the UPS is directly connected to the Debian wheezy
box you mentioned before, correct? (This seems to have a much higher
chance of success than dd-wrt, since the USB drivers for non-PC
systems seem to be lacking in general.)

> Then I setup some defaults as I can sort of recall them from previous setups.
>
> Stepping into /etc/init.d and doing this, isn't getting me there according
> to the response:
>
> gene at coyote:/etc/init.d$ sudo ./nut-server restart
> [ ok ] Restarting NUT - power devices information server and drivers: upsd (driver(s) failed)  (driver(s) failed). upsd.
>
> However:
> gene at coyote:/etc/init.d$ ps axu|grep nut
> nut      31366  0.0  0.0   2256   524 ?        Ss   14:01   0:00 /sbin/upsd
> gene     31740  0.0  0.0   3488   764 pts/6    S+   14:09   0:00 grep nut
>
> says upsd is running.  From that I get that generic-usb is the wrong driver.

The generic-usb driver name seems to be coming from the kernel. It is
somewhat disconnected from the NUT driver names, though.

Unfortunately, Debian suppresses all the useful diagnostic messages.
Since the driver failed to start, you can try starting it with the
NUT-specific 'sudo /sbin/upsdrvctl start', which will show startup
messages.

Based on the USB IDs in the kernel message (the "050D:0751", which is
what lsusb would print), the NUT driver I think you are looking for is
"usbhid-ups".

If that works, we can try to tweak the text in the HCL, so that it is
easier to look up based on the markings on the UPS:

   http://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html?manufacturer=Belkin&connection=USB

> I tried to use usbview to determine the correct driver, but it says none
> of the stuff it needs is compiled into this 3.4-9-amd64 kernel.

Not familiar with usbview. NUT has its own nut-scanner tool (not
included in Debian, AFAIR), but I don't know that we interface with
other driver scanning tools.

-- 
- Charles Lepple