How to clear UPS alarms?
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Hi all!
I have this Eaton Powerware 5110 connected to my pfSense (2.3.4) box using the NUT package (2.7.4_4) with the bcmxcp_usb driver.
Everything was working great until a power-outage yesterday which lasted about 1 hour. I experienced that the pfSense box hadn't shutdown properly and the filesystem was corrupted :(. I reinstalled pfSense and the NUT package, but now the UPS reports some alarm events:
Name: pw5110@localhost Summary status: ALARM, On line Alarm: LOSS_OF_SYNC_BUS INVERTER_LOW_LEVEL_TEST_TIMEOUT WAITING_FOR_UTIL_INPUT BYPASS_FAILURE UPS Load: 2% Battery voltage: 27.2 Input voltage: 244 Input frequency: 50.4 Last test result: Done and passed
Everything seems fine on the UPS though, no alarm or battery light and no beeping.
My questions are:
1. Do these alarms indicate previous errors (history) and if yes, how do I clear them? I've tried pulling both input power and batteries for no more than 10 sec…
2. Why the unclean shutdown? The shutdown delay is 60 seconds. The pfSense box and a switch is the only thing connected to the UPS and the batteries are one year old. -
1. The alarms are being reported by the ups currently. There is no history.
2. Looking at the alarm codes, the unclean shutdown is due to inverter and bypass failures in the ups.
The short version is that your ups has a serious hardware problem and requires service.
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Thanks for the quick response and clarification.
I'll see if I can fix the thing, measure some ESR on those small caps perhaps (as I read on some post was common on old APC UPS's as they could go haywire).
Update 2017-06-09: I have ordered new capacitors to replace a total of 10 bad caps and I'll come back to post the final result. The ESR measured was very high on all of them, but none of them was leaking, nor bulged.
Update 2017-06-19: Elfa Distelec. delivery issues. Sent wrong capacitors 3 times! Just have to wait for their final delivery which should arrive in a couple of days.
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After I finally got the last three caps, I'm sorry to announce that replacing all those faulty caps didn't fix the error messages.
I'll try troubleshooting some more, measure other components. I'll post the result here, if I manage to locate the fault.
The funny thing is though, the unit seems to be functional, it's just those error messages that are showing.
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Update
After upgrading to 2.4.1-DEVELOPMENT I get somewhat different error output:
RECTIFIER_POWER_CAPASITOR_FAIL (New) INVERTER_PROGRAM_STACK_ERROR (New) LOSS_OF_CHARGER_SYNC BYPASS_POWER_LOSS TEMPORARY_BYPASS_OPERATION
My conclusion is that the bcmxp_usb driver cannot be trusted at all. Piece of experimental junk! I'll only go for APC units in the future. I don't have time for this crap.
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But.. you did measure high ESR on the caps. So they were bad. Even if the unit seemed to be functioning fine, you saw bad caps. Doesn't that simply mean that regardless of NUT being right or wrong the hardware on that UPS is bad? Also, a unit that seems fine, even with bad caps cannot be trusted either :p It's also possible that there is more hardware damage than just those caps. An inverter with bad caps is a recipe for disaster.