human
Dabbler
- Joined
- May 25, 2014
- Messages
- 10
Hi,
This is the rationale for my suggestion... (the actual suggestion is in the paragraph that follows this complaining... feel free to skip ahead at any time : - )
... The UPS interface is not good. I'm an experienced support technician, I'm literate, although not experienced with what's going on in the background here... not really competent in linux/unix/BSD, but you know, eager to learn, but in the mean time just want my NAS to work, right... So this interface is not self-explanatory. I'm guessing which USB port to specify, I'm guessing which driver to specify, and meanwhile, I have no idea what to put in the username and password fields. The password is currently set to "fixmepass". LOL. Even the interface is begging to be fixed. Yes I would fix the pass, but I have no idea what to fix it to. I look at stuff in the window-with-no-name that pops up when I click in that area on the bottom of the screen (I suggest giving it a more concise name if it doesn't already have one, and then putting that name in the title bar of the window... UI elements should have names, it helps users to be less confused in their communications) and well I can't really figure out a lot from that stuff, other than it is obviously not working... it says stuff like... okay... I want to copy and paste a snippit but the click and drag selection doesn't seem to quite work in that window in firefox... okay let me try IE... nope, same... Safari... okay... there we go... I can highlight stuff now. okay let's recurse back to where I was... which was... oh yeah... the terminal log file window with no name thingy says stuff like:
freenas notifier: nut not running? (check /var/db/nut/upsd.pid).
and
freenas notifier: Fatal error: unusable configuration
and
freenas notifier: Unable to open /dev/ugen0.4: No such file or directory
so anyway, something's going on there, and yeah I know I can go ask in the forums and research and all that and eventually get this figured out... maybe... or it could be that my UPS just doesn't work with NUT.
The suggestion:
Have an option in your interface to ping a given IP every X seconds, and when the ping fails for Y minutes in a row, shut down. The IP that I would specify for this would be the IP of my router. My router would not be plugged into my UPS. You see where this is going... The power goes off, the router stops responding to pings, FreeNAS shuts down, all my files are safe, and knowing this, I have a warm fuzzy feeling and really you can't put a price on people having warm fuzzy feelings. And this works with ANY UPS, no matter how old it is, or how new it is, no matter how strange the USB protocol is, and that's pretty cool. If FreeNAS did this, then FreeNAS would rock, and I would never say another negative thing about the UI, ever. Because really the UI is pretty decent. And the UI in this forum is pretty nice too.
This is the rationale for my suggestion... (the actual suggestion is in the paragraph that follows this complaining... feel free to skip ahead at any time : - )
... The UPS interface is not good. I'm an experienced support technician, I'm literate, although not experienced with what's going on in the background here... not really competent in linux/unix/BSD, but you know, eager to learn, but in the mean time just want my NAS to work, right... So this interface is not self-explanatory. I'm guessing which USB port to specify, I'm guessing which driver to specify, and meanwhile, I have no idea what to put in the username and password fields. The password is currently set to "fixmepass". LOL. Even the interface is begging to be fixed. Yes I would fix the pass, but I have no idea what to fix it to. I look at stuff in the window-with-no-name that pops up when I click in that area on the bottom of the screen (I suggest giving it a more concise name if it doesn't already have one, and then putting that name in the title bar of the window... UI elements should have names, it helps users to be less confused in their communications) and well I can't really figure out a lot from that stuff, other than it is obviously not working... it says stuff like... okay... I want to copy and paste a snippit but the click and drag selection doesn't seem to quite work in that window in firefox... okay let me try IE... nope, same... Safari... okay... there we go... I can highlight stuff now. okay let's recurse back to where I was... which was... oh yeah... the terminal log file window with no name thingy says stuff like:
freenas notifier: nut not running? (check /var/db/nut/upsd.pid).
and
freenas notifier: Fatal error: unusable configuration
and
freenas notifier: Unable to open /dev/ugen0.4: No such file or directory
so anyway, something's going on there, and yeah I know I can go ask in the forums and research and all that and eventually get this figured out... maybe... or it could be that my UPS just doesn't work with NUT.
The suggestion:
Have an option in your interface to ping a given IP every X seconds, and when the ping fails for Y minutes in a row, shut down. The IP that I would specify for this would be the IP of my router. My router would not be plugged into my UPS. You see where this is going... The power goes off, the router stops responding to pings, FreeNAS shuts down, all my files are safe, and knowing this, I have a warm fuzzy feeling and really you can't put a price on people having warm fuzzy feelings. And this works with ANY UPS, no matter how old it is, or how new it is, no matter how strange the USB protocol is, and that's pretty cool. If FreeNAS did this, then FreeNAS would rock, and I would never say another negative thing about the UI, ever. Because really the UI is pretty decent. And the UI in this forum is pretty nice too.