[Nut-upsuser] APC Back-UPS XS 1500G says "No battery"

Fri May 12 13:54:43 UTC 2017

On May 11, 2017, at 1:51 PM, Jesse Molina <jmolina at swoncology.net> wrote:
> 
> I suspect this is a driver problem because while NUT claims the battery isn't plugged in, it's giving me battery runtime/charge info. Both can't be valid at the same time.
> 
> I am at a remote location from the computer and UPS, so I can't physically go over and check. I asked a remote person to physically look at it and they said there were no unusual blinking lights or anything alarming.
> 
> I send this message previously with debugging output inline, but apparently this mailing list only allows messages lesser than 40Kb in size, and the message was rejected by whoever the admin is.

I'll admit that I hit the reject button. Nothing personal - let me explain.

The NUT mailing lists get a fair amount of spam that we manually filter out before it hits the archives. If you have ever had to sift through a bunch of spam messages, you'll know that it is not exactly a relaxing task. Large messages also end up in that holding area.

I have not personally tried to adjust the 40KB limit, but other seemingly simple tasks like adjusting the HTML on the list info page have resulted in tickets that languish for months or years on the Alioth issue tracker. Sure, we could try to find another place to host the email lists, and deal with the troubles of moving, but there is a simpler solution.

The recommended maximum debug level for initial bug reports is "-DDD" or "-DD", depending on where you look in the documentation. The usbhid-ups driver is fairly verbose, so "-DD" is usually good enough for a first pass.

I usually ask users to compress logs with gzip, and send as an attachment. This lets me do a "zgrep" on previous logs to find similarities. If logs come in as Zip files, or inline, it certainly isn't the end of the world, but it lengthens the search.

</soapbox>

This seems to be the source of the "no battery" alarm:

>    0.571436     hid_lookup_path: 00840004 -> UPS 
>    0.571438     hid_lookup_path: 00840024 -> PowerSummary 
>    0.571440     hid_lookup_path: 00840002 -> PresentStatus 
>    0.571443     hid_lookup_path: 008500d1 -> BatteryPresent 
>    0.571446     Path: UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus.BatteryPresent, Type: Input, ReportID: 0x16, Offset: 3, Size: 1, Value: 0 
>    0.571449     Report[buf]: (5 bytes) => 16 04 00 00 00 
>    0.571451     PhyMax = 0, PhyMin = 0, LogMax = 1, LogMin = 0 
>    0.571453     Unit = 00000000, UnitExp = 0 
>    0.571455     Exponent = 0 
>    0.571457     hid_lookup_path: 00840004 -> UPS 
>    0.571459     hid_lookup_path: 00840024 -> PowerSummary 
>    0.571461     hid_lookup_path: 00840002 -> PresentStatus 
>    0.571463     hid_lookup_path: 008500d1 -> BatteryPresent 
>    0.571466     Path: UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus.BatteryPresent, Type: Feature, ReportID: 0x16, Offset: 3, Size: 1, Value: 0 
>    0.571468     Report[buf]: (5 bytes) => 16 04 00 00 00 
>    0.571471     PhyMax = 0, PhyMin = 0, LogMax = 1, LogMin = 0 
>    0.571473     Unit = 00000000, UnitExp = 0 
>    0.571475     Exponent = 0

Both the Input and Feature seem to agree that the battery is not present. (0x04 -> 0000 0100 corresponds to "Offset: 2" and the "AC Present" bit; all others are zero.
> 
> user at host>apcaccess 
> APC      : 001,036,0870 
> DATE     : 2017-05-08 23:44:14 -0700 
> HOSTNAME : myhost 
> VERSION  : 3.14.14 (31 May 2016) debian 
> UPSNAME  : myups 
> CABLE    : USB Cable 
> DRIVER   : USB UPS Driver 
> UPSMODE  : Stand Alone 
> STARTTIME: 2017-05-08 23:32:58 -0700 
> MODEL    : Back-UPS XS 1500G 
> STATUS   : ONLINE NOBATT 
> LINEV    : 120.0 Volts 
> LOADPCT  : 11.0 Percent 
> BCHARGE  : 100.0 Percent 
> TIMELEFT : 55.8 Minutes 
> MBATTCHG : 15 Percent 
> MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes 
> MAXTIME  : 0 Seconds 
> SENSE    : Medium 
> LOTRANS  : 88.0 Volts 
> HITRANS  : 139.0 Volts 
> ALARMDEL : No alarm 
> BATTV    : 27.3 Volts 
> LASTXFER : No transfers since turnon 
> NUMXFERS : 0 
> TONBATT  : 0 Seconds 
> CUMONBATT: 0 Seconds 
> XOFFBATT : N/A 
> SELFTEST : NO 
> STATFLAG : 0x01000008 
> SERIALNO : 3B1632X25318 
> BATTDATE : 2016-08-13 
> NOMINV   : 120 Volts 
> NOMBATTV : 24.0 Volts 
> NOMPOWER : 865 Watts 
> FIRMWARE : 866.L8 .D USB FW:L8 
> END APC  : 2017-05-08 23:44:15 -0700 

The apcupsd team is generally quicker to respond to quirks in the APC UPS protocols, and if their latest development version of the code still says NOBATT, it would seem to me that nobody has found a better place to look for the "battery present" status.

We try not to create complicated rules to override some values based on others - it tends to be difficult to debug, and often users are not interested in regression-testing updated drivers against other models ("if it ain't broke, don't fix it", perhaps).

I would first try to schedule an extended selftest (not sure what is available on this model; "upscmd -l" will show possibilities) during a maintenance window to see if the alarm goes away.