Pi as a UPS monitor

JaredBusch

First up is nut.conf. There is only a single option to set in this file, but it is important.

Assuming you are going to have only one device, or if multiple devices, that they will report in on their own, the simplest configuration is to choose standalone

MODE=standalone

Here are the various meanings from the conf file.

# - none: NUT is not configured, or use the Integrated Power Management, or use
#   some external system to startup NUT components. So nothing is to be started.
# - standalone: This mode address a local only configuration, with 1 UPS
#   protecting the local system. This implies to start the 3 NUT layers (driver,
#   upsd and upsmon) and the matching configuration files. This mode can also
#   address UPS redundancy.
# - netserver: same as for the standalone configuration, but also need
#   some more network access controls (firewall, tcp-wrappers) and possibly a
#   specific LISTEN directive in upsd.conf.
#   Since this MODE is opened to the network, a special care should be applied
#   to security concerns.
# - netclient: this mode only requires upsmon.

JaredBusch

Next up is ups.conf, again read the config file for more information, it is fairly thorough.

In this case I am going to connect it to the APC unit pictured at the beginning of this thread.

[bnajaredrouter]
driver = usbhid-ups
port = auto
desc = "Jared Router UPS"

JaredBusch

The file upsd.conf does not need modified for a typical standalone setup.

JaredBusch

The file upsd.users needs modified to have the authentication that upsmon will use added to the end of the file.

[bnaupsmon]
password = AGoodPassword
upsmon master

JaredBusch

The file upsmon.conf starts to get into the nuts and bolts of setting things up to do things for you.

First up will be to uncomment the run as user setting.

RUN_AS_USER nut

Next is creating the monitor line to tell it what system to monitor. This uses the settings from ups.conf and upsd.users that you previously configured.

MONITOR bnajaredrouter@localhost 1 bnaupsmon AGoodPassword master

continuing down the file, the next thing to do is to set notifycmd to point to the upssched program

NOTIFYCMD /sbin/upssched

The final part of this file is to uncomment all of the notify flags and add the EXEC flag to the ones you want to fire the above upssched application. Leaving WALL in while testing is useful, but pretty pointless later for me since the goal is a remote alert.

NOTIFYFLAG ONLINE       SYSLOG+WALL+EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG ONBATT       SYSLOG+WALL+EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG LOWBATT      SYSLOG+WALL
NOTIFYFLAG FSD          SYSLOG+WALL
NOTIFYFLAG COMMOK       SYSLOG+WALL
NOTIFYFLAG COMMBAD      SYSLOG+WALL
NOTIFYFLAG SHUTDOWN     SYSLOG+WALL
NOTIFYFLAG REPLBATT     SYSLOG+WALL
NOTIFYFLAG NOCOMM       SYSLOG+WALL
NOTIFYFLAG NOPARENT     SYSLOG+WALL

JaredBusch

If you never set any of the flags to EXEC in the previous section, there is nothing to do here, you can stop. But what would be the point of a remote alerting device that does not alert.

So now we come to the last conf file upssched.conf. This one is a bit more annoying because the developers intentionally chose to ship this broken to 'force' you to set up a file yourself.
By default, PIPEFN and LOCKFN are commented out and point to the /var/run/nut/upssched directory that does not exist.

# PIPEFN /var/run/nut/upssched/upssched.pipe
# LOCKFN /var/run/nut/upssched/upssched.lock

So we make a directory and the pipe file. You are instructed to not make the lock file in the comments.

sudo mkdir /etc/nut/upssched
sudo chown nut:nut /etc/nut/upssched
sudo touch /etc/nut/upssched/upssched.pipe
sudo chown nut:nut /etc/nut/upssched/upssched.pipe

Editing this file, note the location the shell script that will be called. This is the default, and there is an example script already there, ready to be modified.

CMDSCRIPT /bin/upssched-cmd

Uncomment and update the PIPE and LOCK lines.

PIPEFN /etc/nut/upssched/upssched.pipe
LOCKFN /etc/nut/upssched/upssched.lock

Now comes the part that does work, the AT commads. You will want to read the comments and likely the documentation to make full use of this. But here are a couple examples of AT commands to get you going.
When the unit goes on battery, call the shell script to start a 30 second timer named 'onbattwarn'. When the power comes back online, cancel the timer.

AT ONBATT * START-TIMER onbattwarn 30
AT ONLINE * CANCEL-TIMER onbattwarn
AT ONLINE * EXECUTE ongrid

JaredBusch

Now the final bit of editing, and the one a lot of you will have to simply copy examples for. Editing the shell script that does the actual work.

You can look at the default script and see that because there was no default AT command with 'upsgone' as an named trigger, nothing would ever happen. Let's make it useful.

sudo nano /bin/upssched-cmd

#! /bin/sh
case $1 in
        ongrid)
                logger -t upssched-cmd "The UPS is now on grid power."
                ;;
        onbattwarn)
                logger -t upssched-cmd "The UPS has been on battery power for 30 seconds."
                ;;
        *)
                logger -t upssched-cmd "Unrecognized command: $1"
                ;;
esac

JaredBusch

And something is broke, but since I followed the directions I had previously wrote in October, that I means I left out something I did.

pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:/etc/nut $ tail -f /var/log/syslog
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Starting Network UPS Tools - power device monitor and shutdown controller...
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1284]: fopen /var/run/nut/upsmon.pid: No such file or directory
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1284]: UPS: bnajaredrouter@localhost (master) (power value 1)
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1284]: Using power down flag file /etc/killpower
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1286]: Startup successful
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: Init SSL without certificate database
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: nut-monitor.service: Supervising process 1287 which is not our child. We'll most likely not notice when it exits.
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Started Network UPS Tools - power device monitor and shutdown controller.
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: UPS [bnajaredrouter@localhost]: connect failed: Connection failure: Connection refused
Feb  2 04:20:42 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: Communications with UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost lost
Feb  2 04:20:47 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: UPS [bnajaredrouter@localhost]: connect failed: Connection failure: Connection refused
Feb  2 04:20:47 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost is unavailable
                                                                               
Broadcast message from nut@bna-pwr-pi-01 (somewhere) (Thu Feb  2 04:20:47 2017)
                                                                               
UPS bnajaredrouter@localhost is unavailable                                    
                                                                               
Feb  2 04:20:52 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: UPS [bnajaredrouter@localhost]: connect failed: Connection failure: Connection refused
Feb  2 04:20:57 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: UPS [bnajaredrouter@localhost]: connect failed: Connection failure: Connection refused
Feb  2 04:21:02 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: UPS [bnajaredrouter@localhost]: connect failed: Connection failure: Connection refused
Feb  2 04:21:07 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[1287]: UPS [bnajaredrouter@localhost]: connect failed: Connection failure: Connection refused

JaredBusch

Manually executed sudo start upsd and got a driver error. Fixed typo, rebooted, and it is online.

pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ tail -f /var/log/syslog
Feb  2 04:27:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Reached target Graphical Interface.
Feb  2 04:27:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Starting Update UTMP about System Runlevel Changes...
Feb  2 04:27:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsmon[737]: Init SSL without certificate database
Feb  2 04:27:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Started Update UTMP about System Runlevel Changes.
Feb  2 04:27:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Startup finished in 2.052s (kernel) + 10.336s (userspace) = 12.389s.
Feb  2 04:27:24 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsd[733]: User bnaupsmon@::1 logged into UPS [bnajaredrouter]
Feb  2 04:27:31 bna-pwr-pi-01 dhcpcd[698]: wlan0: no IPv6 Routers available
Feb  2 04:27:51 bna-pwr-pi-01 systemd[1]: Time has been changed
Feb  2 04:27:52 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsd[733]: Data for UPS [bnajaredrouter] is stale - check driver
Feb  2 04:27:52 bna-pwr-pi-01 upsd[733]: UPS [bnajaredrouter] data is no longer stale

pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $ sudo upsc bnajaredrouter
Init SSL without certificate database
battery.charge: 100
battery.charge.low: 10
battery.charge.warning: 50
battery.date: 2001/09/25
battery.mfr.date: 2010/12/15
battery.runtime: 14100
battery.runtime.low: 120
battery.type: PbAc
battery.voltage: 27.3
battery.voltage.nominal: 24.0
device.mfr: American Power Conversion
device.model: Back-UPS BR1000G
device.serial: 3B1051X20349  
device.type: ups
driver.name: usbhid-ups
driver.parameter.pollfreq: 30
driver.parameter.pollinterval: 2
driver.parameter.port: auto
driver.version: 2.7.2
driver.version.data: APC HID 0.95
driver.version.internal: 0.38
input.sensitivity: medium
input.transfer.high: 147
input.transfer.low: 88
input.voltage: 126.0
input.voltage.nominal: 120
ups.beeper.status: disabled
ups.delay.shutdown: 20
ups.firmware: 868.L1 .D
ups.firmware.aux: L1  
ups.load: 3
ups.mfr: American Power Conversion
ups.mfr.date: 2010/12/15
ups.model: Back-UPS BR1000G
ups.productid: 0002
ups.realpower.nominal: 600
ups.serial: 3B1051X20349  
ups.status: OL
ups.test.result: No test initiated
ups.timer.reboot: 0
ups.timer.shutdown: -1
ups.vendorid: 051d
pi@bna-pwr-pi-01:~ $

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.