[Nut-upsuser] Problems with NUT 2.7.2 on CentOS 7 and using the Mini-Box OpenUPS

Wed Mar 18 02:32:24 UTC 2015

On Mar 17, 2015, at 11:46 AM, Philip Taylor <philip at kelsotowers.co.uk> wrote:

> Charles,
> 
> Did you get chance to look at the data I sent you, please?
> 
> I’ve done some more work myself and the conclusion I’ve reached is that if the minibus OpenUPS doesn’t support instant commands, then sending ‘upsdrvctl shutdown’ won’t ever work, as it would need to send instant commands!

You are correct; I don't see any HU_TYPE_CMD entries in openups-hid.c. I latched on to the other error you mentioned (about claiming the device).

The other HID drivers seem to trigger shutdown by writing to the various timers (e.g. UPS.PowerSummary.DelayBeforeReboot). Your firmware seems to have UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus.ShutdownRequested, which according to the HID PDC spec, is read/write. I wonder if the firmware responds to this?

> Also from the trace I sent you, it appears that after the ‘RunTimeToEmpty’ query, the interface tries to read a Report b1 of size 248 which results in a broken pipe. Is that correct and what would need to be done to resolve this? Or is that simply the end of the useful data, after which anything else is discarded?

A bit of explanation on the debug output: the "Report Descriptor: (739 bytes)" hex dump is the HID representation of the individual reports available. NUT parses that out, and iterates over all of the "Usage IDs" (status variables, and settings). The values for the usages are grouped in Reports, each with a one-byte ID. For instance, the UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus.* usages are all one bit long, and they are grouped in the 16-bit ReportID 0x40.

Usually, the Usage IDs are unique. For whatever reason, they use the same ff000001.ff000001 ID for several reports, so I suspect that these reports are accessed directly by their Report ID, instead of looking up the HID Usage IDs to find a report ID.

That may mean that there is another protocol to get report 0xB1, for instance - it might involve writing something to one of the other reports first. At any rate, 0xff000 is the vendor-specific prefix, so unless Mini-Box has an advanced programming guide, I am not sure what you could do with that.

> I’m minded to stop spending time on trying to get NUT to shut down the OpenUPS, or the  and then use the following sequence :
> 
> 1) UPSMON keeps track of data from the OpenUPS - I can see voltages and currents etc. using ups. And it does notifications properly.

Out of curiosity, which notifications? In the openups_drv_start_onbatt log, the PresentStatus values look the same as the online log. Or do you mean you got that from the ignorelb configuration?

> 2) It notifies me when the input power goes off and battery level drops to a critical % - set in NUT, not the OpenUPS. At (say) 11.3V it flags this as critical but doesn’t shut anything down.
> 3)When the battery level reaches a defined voltage - say 11.2V - the OpenUPS toggles the motherboard power switch, which triggers a controlled shutdown of the system. Initiated by the UPS and communicated on a pair of wires - not USB which I can’t get to work!
> 4) The OpenUPS closes itself down then (even if the power comes back in the meantime - there doesn’t seem to be a race issue)
> 5) When input power returns, the hardware is configured to automatically start.

Good that it doesn't have the race condition.

> This isn’t ideal in my mind as it should be possible using the USB cable alone and it should be controlled from the server (NUT) but I think it’s be best the OpenUPS will do.
> 
> Any comments, please? My further searching shows Nicu Pavel of mini-box asked questions on this forum in 2012 but I don’t see any good answers! And mini-box so far haven’t replied to me.

I found those threads; that has been the only contact with Mini-Box that I am aware of.

> Many thanks for any help you can provide.
> 
> Regards, Philip.
> 
> 
> 
>> On 14 Mar 2015, at 11:07, Philip Taylor <philip at kelsotowers.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> Charles,
>> 
>> Thanks again for your help, and sorry I didn’t :cc - noted for the future!
>> 
>> I’m suspicious that the OpenUPS doesn’t behave properly in a number of ways, of which the USB traffic is the one of immediate concern. It seems to me that NUT can read from it but probably not write to it: and the OpenUPS doesn’t flag ‘low battery’ conditions correctly either. It does shut itself down at a battery voltage I can configure (via MS windows) and it does provide a signal via a cable to the power button that will trigger a linux shutdown - but it won’t do this via USB. So it’s useable with that work-round but not as intended!
>> 
>> It also reports spurious values - you spotted the 3.9 million seconds! When on input power, that’s what you get for runtime! A sensible value is passed when on battery. Whether that matters is questionable. Various other values aren’t good either, like battery current when running on battery. Again that’s not too important as battery voltage, output voltage and output current are OK.
>> 
>> Mini-box support and documentation are very poor too - but you can’t help with that!
>> 
>> I hope you can comment on the attached debug output which you requested. I’ve provided two - one on battery and the other on input power (which is 15v for my OpenUPS). (I have higher debug level options available but you asked for -DDD)
>> 
>> The command I used to start the driver was /usr/sbin/usbhid-ups -DDD -a openups
>> 
>> Finally, I’d be interested in the additional debug modes for usbhid-ups. This isn’t a ‘production system’ currently; it’s my home automation server and it’s getting rebuilt shortly as I’ve changed tack on a few things and it needs a clean out anyway! So I will try anything!
>> 
>> Many thanks for your help.
>> 
>> Philip.
>> <openups_drv_start_lineon.gz><openups_drv_start_onbatt.gz>

-- 
Charles Lepple
clepple at gmail