[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#717488: Bug#717488: Please always launch /etc/init.d/ups-monitor when halting the system

[Fabien C.]

On 26/07/2013 03:06, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> It is basically not a good idea at all to cut power instead of issuing a
> hardware shutdown command.  Lots of stuff on server boxes get highly pissed
> off if you just cut power.

Hmmm, "shutdown -hH" still shuts down the disks, and halts the CPU. I think the 
*only* thing it does not is cut the power, but the system is already ready to
lose it.  

> I would have to put some effort to recall all the trouble we had in the past
> to access whether we can support this proposed change, though.
 
You are probably referring to this discussion, which I read:
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=358696  

Well, we could make it an option if you think it is not a good idea to have it
as default. 

> What is important is that we must not break the sane scenario, where you
> have the box properly configured to always power up on power restore, and
> the UPS configured to always cycle the load once the load (i.e. us) signals
> that it is past the point of no return (i.e. that it will require a power
> cycle to restart -- in Debian, that pretty much means as soon as we switch
> to runlevel 0).

I don't think "always power up on power restore" is a "properly configured" 
box. If a box is off, that is very probably for a good reason, and I *don't*
want it to power up based on some random event like power outage... What the 
"normal" people want is to get back to the state the machines were before the
power problem occured, no more, no less. That is restore last power state.

Any other configuration could lead to problems (like IP conflicts, too much
power consumption, etc.)

> Also, shutdown -H must NOT issue a UPS power off command [by default], it is
> documented to not do it.

We make the documentation, don't we? 

Also, I would add that /etc/init.d/ups-monitor does *not* cut the power off if 
the UPS is not running on battery. 

But once again, we could make it an option. 

Fabien