This is essentially just a transcript of the terminal log from someone who managed to turn on the UPS service for his UPS using NUT's usbhid-ups driver. The "Auxiliary Parameters" that make FreeNAS work with BE700Y-IND are mentioned below and if you are in a hurry, just try putting them in the GUI. Otherwise, this might be slightly useful for configuring the UPS service for other UPS models also.
This write-up targets home users with a single UPS. What is suggested here might not be optimal for organizations with multiple UPS.
Warning: This document should not encourage you to type ups commands willy-nilly as sudo on your primary storage! A wrong command can cause an abrupt shutdown and you could lose your data. Be very careful with UPS commands, especially with sudo or as root.
About the UPS
BE700Y-IND is a replacement for APC BACK-UPS ES 700VA 230V, probably just for India. The previous version didn't have any interface ports. My decision to buy it was based on APC's literature that claimed it is plug-and-play with Macs, so I assumed the protocol was not (entirely) proprietary.
There is also a BE800Y with higher wattage, but no interface ports. For my purpose, the wattage provided by BE700Y-IND was just fine.
Getting Started
Once I plugged it in, I noticed this in /var/log/messages
If you are trying to find the usb port you need to specify in the GUI for UPS settings, grep for 'American Power Conversion' or a suitable substring if you have an APC UPS. That "ugen0.3" thing is the usb port number you have to enter the Port field of "UPS Settings".
You could also try "usbconfig" as root or with sudo. Mine gave me this:
My first approach was to try all the APC drivers, starting with the one that matched most closely with my model. None of them worked. I kept getting this in /var/log/messages:
After some googling, I came across this post that advised liberalising the permissions for /dev/ugenX.Y, because the driver needs to read/write to it. I'm not sure what it runs as, so I changed it to 777 but it didn't help me. I also created a upsmon user, gave it a password, changed ownership of the port to it, but still, nothing.
Digging Deeper
After enough Googling I realised that the GUI translates to /etc/local/nut/ups.conf. Mine looked like this:
And the ups.conf was
Note that there is no mention of exactly which driver was selected in the GUI. The selection of UPS model in the GUI only helps narrow down the choice of driver to usb, generic (serial) or network.
The documentation for usbhid-ups, upsdrvctl & ups.conf mention some ways of debugging/printing what happens when the UPS driver tries to communicate with your UPS, but its not obvious how to do that from the GUI. This page mentions how to run the usb driver "by hand", which is also what is attempted when you try to turn on the UPS service from FreeNAS GUI. Basically, it runs
.
This takes the UPS settings from /etc/local/nut/ups.conf and runs the actual driver (usbhid-ups, in my case) with those parameters in the command line. I tried that:
which gave me this:
Ok, so I need to run this
Here's what I got:
The manpage for usbhid-ups lists all the parameters that can be passed to the driver, so I tried to make it as specific as possible:
But then you'd get
Also, last time, I was probably too specific. May be I passed "too much information" to the driver? This time, I'd only be as specific as I need to be. So the ups.conf looks like
And voila! something was happening!
The elation didn't last very long, once I actually looked at what was scrolling past. There were error messages. Look at the last line, for example:
Fortunately, the manpage for usbhid-ups had this:
Next attempt was this:
This still had that particular error message, but the subsequent logs looked much better:
I guess it was time to try to turn the UPS service on, with these parameters. Also, I had nothing left to try to debug, anyway. Only that, these additional parameters need to be specified in the GUI, so FreeNAS would write them into its sqlite db and therefore would survive a reboot. This is what the final UPS settings screen looked like
I actually created a upsmon user with a valid password. I don't know if that's really necessary.
With these, the UPS service turned on without any fuss.
This morning, I had to restart my server to reset its network. The usb permissions I had set up were gone, but the UPS service was still on. It probably works too, since I got an email this morning when the power went down for a minute, and also when it came back up. I have yet to test actual shutdown/restart.
Testing the service
run this to find the commands supported by your UPS
upscmd -l YOUR-UPS-SECTION@localhost
This will tell you various dynamic properties your ups can be queried for
upsc YOUR-UPS-SECTION@localhost
This write-up targets home users with a single UPS. What is suggested here might not be optimal for organizations with multiple UPS.
Warning: This document should not encourage you to type ups commands willy-nilly as sudo on your primary storage! A wrong command can cause an abrupt shutdown and you could lose your data. Be very careful with UPS commands, especially with sudo or as root.
About the UPS
BE700Y-IND is a replacement for APC BACK-UPS ES 700VA 230V, probably just for India. The previous version didn't have any interface ports. My decision to buy it was based on APC's literature that claimed it is plug-and-play with Macs, so I assumed the protocol was not (entirely) proprietary.
There is also a BE800Y with higher wattage, but no interface ports. For my purpose, the wattage provided by BE700Y-IND was just fine.
Getting Started
Once I plugged it in, I noticed this in /var/log/messages
If you are trying to find the usb port you need to specify in the GUI for UPS settings, grep for 'American Power Conversion' or a suitable substring if you have an APC UPS. That "ugen0.3" thing is the usb port number you have to enter the Port field of "UPS Settings".
You could also try "usbconfig" as root or with sudo. Mine gave me this:
My first approach was to try all the APC drivers, starting with the one that matched most closely with my model. None of them worked. I kept getting this in /var/log/messages:
After some googling, I came across this post that advised liberalising the permissions for /dev/ugenX.Y, because the driver needs to read/write to it. I'm not sure what it runs as, so I changed it to 777 but it didn't help me. I also created a upsmon user, gave it a password, changed ownership of the port to it, but still, nothing.
Digging Deeper
After enough Googling I realised that the GUI translates to /etc/local/nut/ups.conf. Mine looked like this:
And the ups.conf was
Note that there is no mention of exactly which driver was selected in the GUI. The selection of UPS model in the GUI only helps narrow down the choice of driver to usb, generic (serial) or network.
The documentation for usbhid-ups, upsdrvctl & ups.conf mention some ways of debugging/printing what happens when the UPS driver tries to communicate with your UPS, but its not obvious how to do that from the GUI. This page mentions how to run the usb driver "by hand", which is also what is attempted when you try to turn on the UPS service from FreeNAS GUI. Basically, it runs
Code:
/usr/local/libexec/nut/upsdrvctl start
This takes the UPS settings from /etc/local/nut/ups.conf and runs the actual driver (usbhid-ups, in my case) with those parameters in the command line. I tried that:
Code:
sudo /usr/local/libexec/nut/upsdrvctl -DD start
which gave me this:
Ok, so I need to run this
Code:
/usr/local/libexec/nut/usbhid-ups -a BE700Y-IND
Here's what I got:
So, the driver can "see" my ups at ugen0.3 just fine, only that it doesn't realize its an UPS that it can talk to. So may be I need to be more specific about exactly what to look for?
The manpage for usbhid-ups lists all the parameters that can be passed to the driver, so I tried to make it as specific as possible:
Still, no dice. And it was getting painful switching back & forth between the terminal and the GUI. I needed some way to pass these parameters from the command-line itself. And, sure enough, the man page for usbhid-ups and "/usr/local/libexec/nut/usbhid-ups -h" would both tell you how to: just use the "-x" flag. So I tried this
Code:
sudo /usr/local/libexec/nut/usbhid-ups -DD -x vendorid=051d -x productid=0002
But then you'd get
So, you must have a section created in /etc/local/nut/ups.conf with minimal information, while the rest can be passed the rest from command line.
Also, last time, I was probably too specific. May be I passed "too much information" to the driver? This time, I'd only be as specific as I need to be. So the ups.conf looks like
while I ran
Code:
sudo /usr/local/libexec/nut/usbhid-ups -DD -x vendorid=051d -x productid=0002 -a BE700Y-IND
And voila! something was happening!
The elation didn't last very long, once I actually looked at what was scrolling past. There were error messages. Look at the last line, for example:
Fortunately, the manpage for usbhid-ups had this:
Next attempt was this:
Code:
sudo /usr/local/libexec/nut/usbhid-ups -DD -x vendorid=051d -x productid=0002 -a BE700Y-IND -x maxreport
This still had that particular error message, but the subsequent logs looked much better:
I guess it was time to try to turn the UPS service on, with these parameters. Also, I had nothing left to try to debug, anyway. Only that, these additional parameters need to be specified in the GUI, so FreeNAS would write them into its sqlite db and therefore would survive a reboot. This is what the final UPS settings screen looked like
I actually created a upsmon user with a valid password. I don't know if that's really necessary.
With these, the UPS service turned on without any fuss.
This morning, I had to restart my server to reset its network. The usb permissions I had set up were gone, but the UPS service was still on. It probably works too, since I got an email this morning when the power went down for a minute, and also when it came back up. I have yet to test actual shutdown/restart.
Testing the service
run this to find the commands supported by your UPS
upscmd -l YOUR-UPS-SECTION@localhost
This will tell you various dynamic properties your ups can be queried for
upsc YOUR-UPS-SECTION@localhost
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