Pi as a UPS monitor

JaredBusch

Unplugged the power and had some good news, some bad.

The WALL commands spammed me, so I know things fired.

The syslog though showed an error about permissions for PIPE/LOCK. See the message about failed to connect to parent.

Feb  2 04:32:33 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[737]: UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost on battery
Feb  2 04:32:41 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched[805]: Failed to connect to parent and failed to create parent: No such file or directory
Feb  2 04:33:03 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[737]: UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost on line power
Feb  2 04:33:03 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched[811]: Executing command: ongrid
Feb  2 04:33:03 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched-cmd: The UPS is now on grid power.

Time to check the permissions.

JaredBusch

Well that would be a problem. Where did the file I made go? I guess the default directory was a bad choice?

pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ sudo ls -l /var/run/nut/
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 upsd.pid
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Feb  2 04:27 upsmon.pid
srw-rw---- 1 nut  nut  0 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter.pid
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $

JaredBusch

and there there we go.. changed directory to /etc/nut/upssched for PIPE/LOCK (already corrected instructions above)

WALL spam...

Broadcast message from nut@bna-pwr-pi-01 (somewhere) (Thu Feb  2 04:44:19 2017)
                                                                               
UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost on battery                                        
                                                           
Broadcast message from nut@bna-pwr-pi-01 (somewhere) (Thu Feb  2 04:45:19 2017)
                                                                               
UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost on line power

and the SYSLOG showing the trigger and the command from the shell script.

Feb  2 04:43:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[917]: Startup successful
Feb  2 04:43:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[918]: Init SSL without certificate database
Feb  2 04:43:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: nut-monitor.service: Supervising process 918 which is not our child. We'll most likely not notice when it exits.
Feb  2 04:43:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Started Network UPS Tools - power device monitor and shutdown controller.
Feb  2 04:43:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsd[733]: User bnaupsmon@::1 logged into UPS [bnajaredrouter]
Feb  2 04:44:19 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[918]: UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost on battery
Feb  2 04:44:19 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched[929]: Timer daemon started
Feb  2 04:44:19 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched[929]: New timer: onbattwarn (30 seconds)
Feb  2 04:44:49 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched[929]: Event: onbattwarn
Feb  2 04:44:49 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched-cmd: The UPS has been on battery power for 30 seconds.
Feb  2 04:45:04 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched[929]: Timer queue empty, exiting
Feb  2 04:45:19 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[918]: UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost on line power
Feb  2 04:45:19 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched[937]: Executing command: ongrid
Feb  2 04:45:19 bna-pwr-pi-01 upssched-cmd: The UPS is now on grid power.

JaredBusch

No able to test email right now because there is no way to send SMTP port 25 from my house. I have a VPN to the colo up, and there is a mail relay running there, but it will not accept from outside its LAN.

So I will have to set that up later.

JaredBusch

I'll rewrite this as an actual how to in the next few days.

JaredBusch

@JaredBusch said in Pi as a UPS monitor:

Well that would be a problem. Where did the file I made go? I guess the default directory was a bad choice?

pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ sudo ls -l /var/run/nut/
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 upsd.pid
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Feb  2 04:27 upsmon.pid
srw-rw---- 1 nut  nut  0 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter.pid
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $

@scottalanmiller what would be the 'proper' place for these files?

travisdh1

@JaredBusch said in Pi as a UPS monitor:

Well that would be a problem. Where did the file I made go? I guess the default directory was a bad choice?

pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ sudo ls -l /var/run/nut/
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 upsd.pid
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Feb  2 04:27 upsmon.pid
srw-rw---- 1 nut  nut  0 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter.pid
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $

If it's me, that's normally forgetting to add the sudo before my favorite text editor. Anything in /dev or /etc requires root privilege. Besides that, dunno. Nano complains at you saying "read only" when you try to save.... yeah, seen that a few more times than I can count.

JaredBusch

@JaredBusch said in Pi as a UPS monitor:

@JaredBusch said in Pi as a UPS monitor:
Well that would be a problem. Where did the file I made go? I guess the default directory was a bad choice?
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ sudo ls -l /var/run/nut/
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 upsd.pid
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Feb  2 04:27 upsmon.pid
srw-rw---- 1 nut  nut  0 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter.pid
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ 
@scottalanmiller what would be the 'proper' place for these files?

Hey @scottalanmiller you never answered this one. What is 'proper' for this kinda thing.

travisdh1

@JaredBusch said in Pi as a UPS monitor:

@JaredBusch said in Pi as a UPS monitor:
@JaredBusch said in Pi as a UPS monitor:
Well that would be a problem. Where did the file I made go? I guess the default directory was a bad choice?
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ sudo ls -l /var/run/nut/
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 upsd.pid
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Feb  2 04:27 upsmon.pid
srw-rw---- 1 nut  nut  0 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter
-rw-r--r-- 1 nut  nut  4 Feb  2 04:27 usbhid-ups-bnajaredrouter.pid
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ 
@scottalanmiller what would be the 'proper' place for these files?
Hey @scottalanmiller you never answered this one. What is 'proper' for this kinda thing.

Should be /etc/nut. The standard is to put config files in /etc. /dev is generally hardware devices.

gjacobse

@JaredBusch

You could add this little display on your Pi for local status-

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3527?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=videodescrip&utm_campaign=newproducts

https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/970x728/3527-04.jpg

scottalanmiller

@gjacobse I like that, it's cute.

travisdh1

@gjacobse Nice find. And only uses 6 pins? I've got a 2.5" display that uses most of the GPIO block

gjacobse

@travisdh1 said in Pi as a UPS monitor:

@gjacobse Nice find. And only uses 6 pins? I've got a 2.5" display that uses most of the GPIO block

The only thing I might do is see if it was possible to rotate the display part 90deg,.. free up the header area for more - OR make a breakout board for all 20 GPIO with the OlED turned...

gjacobse

@JaredBusch

Did you ever get this project finished?

JaredBusch

Aside from alerting, this was working. No, I never circled back to this.

bxdobs

Struggling with getting nut to work with an old APC UPS ... lsusb suggests the UPS USB port is connecting to the PI (it lists the device when plugged in) but can't seem to find the right combination of configurations to allow nut to actually monitor the UPS itself.

tried drivers;
usbhid-usb port=auto
genericusb with type; = 1, 2, 9, or 12 (port=serial1)
apcsmart
apcsmart-old
apcupsd-ups

seems that the ups is just not being found

is there some way to manually poke the USB port (sort of like we used to do with uarts with AT commands)?

gjacobse

@bxdobs said in Pi as a UPS monitor:

Struggling with getting nut to work with an old APC UPS ... lsusb suggests the UPS USB port is connecting to the PI (it lists the device when plugged in) but can't seem to find the right combination of configurations to allow nut to actually monitor the UPS itself.

tried drivers;
usbhid-usb port=auto
genericusb with type; = 1, 2, 9, or 12 (port=serial1)
apcsmart
apcsmart-old
apcupsd-ups

seems that the ups is just not being found

is there some way to manually poke the USB port (sort of like we used to do with uarts with AT commands)?

I actually just went through this about a month or so ago when I set up Ubuntu Server and a APCups. I'm not at the house to pull what I did,... but I heavily referenced this very thread. Yes - where I don't live in Linux CLI as some do, I had to do some trial and error again. but that's part of (re)learning.

bxdobs

Removed the nut installation, config files and did a complete Raspbian upgrade ... Now after reinstalling nut with the bare minimum configuration, it is finally talking to the ups.

Even though I have been technically involved with computer tech going back to the late '70s, this install was certainly not for the faint of heart ... I can understand why people walk away in frustration from this stuff

travisdh1

2023, and this thread is still the best resource for getting nut/apcupsd running.

travisdh1

I'll add another note for future reference here.

For Fedora 39 Server, apcupsd has another package apcupsd-cgi that can be used with a web server to display UPS status. However, you have to move the files it installs by default because they're not in the /var/www/cgi-bin directory.

sudo dnf install -y apcupsd apcupsd-cgi httpd
sudo mv /var/www/apcupsd /var/www/cgi-bin/
sudo chown apache:apache /var/www/cgi-bin/apcupsd/*
sudo systemctl enable --now httpd

Should get it up and running.
I found 3 useful tools with it.
http://YOURIP/cgi-bin/apcupsd/uspstats.cgi
http://YOURIP/cgi-bin/apcupsd/multimon.cgi
http://YOURIP/cgi-bin/apcupsd/upsfstats.cgi