[Nut-upsuser] battery not installed, but battery still 100% and NUT 2.7.2-4 does not catch this and report a error

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 03 April 2017 14:13:08 Stuart D. Gathman wrote:

Back on the mailing list, where such belongs.

> On Mon, 3 Apr 2017, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Nut, IIRC, can do a periodic battery test by putting it offline,
> > using the battery, for a predetermined length of time, weekly,
> > monthly etc,
>
> We definitely don't want that in this instance either!

Why not? If the battery has a holdup time of 5 minutes when its fresh, 
and a downtime of 30 seconds takes it down .2 volts, it can and will 
stand a weekly 30 seconds on battery test once a week for 2 or 3 years, 
which is about the life of a jellcell anyway, the point being that if at 
the end of that 30 second test, the battery is down say .5 volts, its 
time visit your version of batteries.com and get another set headed your 
way.

> (Unless it is 
> a dual PS server.)

Which quite likely will not load the battery significantly as it will 
draw power from the highest voltage source, usually the powerline.

> We want the ALARM that the nut driver is 
> generating, and upsd is passing on - to be acted on in some way by
> upsmon.  Which NOTIFYCMD is run when there is an ALARM?

I've not read the docs in ages, but if there isn't something mentioned in 
a man upsmon, I would be unpleasantly surprised.

According to my copy, it does a -wall (warn all) by default, and it looks 
like REPLBATT is one such message, and the default time for a repeat is 
12 hours.  The -wall type message shows on every open terminal on the 
system's network, so someone should see it.  From the upsmon.conf file:

NOTIFYCMD command
           upsmon calls this to send messages when things happen.

           This command is called with the full text of the message as 
one argument. The environment string NOTIFYTYPE will contain the type 
string of whatever
           caused this event to happen.

           If you need to use upssched(8), then you must make it your 
NOTIFYCMD by listing it here.

           Note that this is only called for NOTIFY events that have EXEC 
set with NOTIFYFLAG. See NOTIFYFLAG below for more details.

           Making this some sort of shell script might not be a bad idea. 
For more information and ideas, see pager.txt in the docs directory.

           Remember, this command also needs to be one element in the 
configuration file, so if your command has spaces, then wrap it in 
quotes.

           NOTIFYCMD "/path/to/script --foo --bar"

           This script is run in the background—that is, upsmon forks 
before it calls out to start it. This means that your NOTIFYCMD may have 
multiple
           instances running simultaneously if a lot of stuff happens all 
at once. Keep this in mind when designing complicated notifiers.

       NOTIFYMSG type message
           upsmon comes with a set of stock messages for various events. 
You can change them if you like.

               NOTIFYMSG ONLINE "UPS %s is getting line power"

               NOTIFYMSG ONBATT "Someone pulled the plug on %s"

           Note that %s is replaced with the identifier of the UPS in 
question.
          Note that %s is replaced with the identifier of the UPS in 
question.

           The message must be one element in the configuration file, so 
if it contains spaces, you must wrap it in quotes.

               NOTIFYMSG NOCOMM "Someone stole UPS %s"

           Possible values for type:

           ONLINE
               UPS is back online

           ONBATT
               UPS is on battery

           LOWBATT
               UPS is on battery and has a low battery (is critical)

           FSD
               UPS is being shutdown by the master (FSD = "Forced 
Shutdown")

           COMMOK
               Communications established with the UPS

           COMMBAD
               Communications lost to the UPS

           SHUTDOWN
               The system is being shutdown

           REPLBATT
               The UPS battery is bad and needs to be replaced

           NOCOMM
               A UPS is unavailable (can’t be contacted for monitoring)

       NOTIFYFLAG type flag[+flag][+flag]...
           By default, upsmon sends walls global messages to all logged 
in users) via /bin/wall and writes to the syslog when things happen. You 
can change
           this.

           Examples:

There is more in that file than what I've quoted here. Recommended 
reading.

But unless you actually do the weekly or even monthly, short "on battery" 
test, its not likely you will ever see a replace batteries message 
because I don't think that flag sets set by a power failure that takes 
you down.  Not time enough to set the flag.

The TANSTAAFL principle applies here, same as everyplace else.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>