NUT package (2.8.0 and below)

stompro

Hello Denny Page, You mentioned that the current version of Nut tries to shut down the UPS. I'm discovering that the UPS that I'm using (Cyberpower OR500LCD) seems to have a faulty implementation, and blips the power (turns off load and then immediately turns it back on). This seems to have the side effect of corrupting something on my SG-2220 devices, which puts them in a boot loop with a kernel panic.

I'm running 2.4.3 P1 with the latest Nut package available.

A reinstall is required to get the system running again after this event.

After further reading, I'm finding that it doesn't seem to possible to do a safe instant shutdown of a UPS in FreeBSD, because the filesystem doesn't finish syncing until after the shutdown scripts finish. And if the nut shutdown script turns off the UPS, then disk corruption can occur.

So would it be accurate to say that it is only safe to use nut to shutdown pfsense firewalls when the UPS supports a shutdown delay, to allow enough time for the system to fully halt before the load power is pulled?

Josh

dennypage

@stompro said in NUT package:

You mentioned that the current version of Nut tries to shut down the UPS. I'm discovering that the UPS that I'm using (Cyberpower OR500LCD) seems to have a faulty implementation, and blips the power (turns off load and then immediately turns it back on).

I don't have a Cyberpower on hand to double check, but most all UPSs offer some form of shutdown delay. You can check this in the UPS by looking at the ups.delay.shutdown variable using the upsrw command.

stompro

@dennypage Hello, the ups does report ups.delay.shutdown = 20 by default, but 'upsdrvctrl -k' doesn't seem to make use of it at all. The ups immediately powers off at "Initiating UPS shutdown" and then turns back on immediately.

I tried setting ondelay and offdelay in the driver config and that had no effect.

This UPS also doesn't seem to store variables set by upsrw.

I'm testing by setting the lowbatt setting to 90%, so I don't need to wait so long... I wonder if that is causing problems? Maybe this UPS is hard coded to the 10% lowbatt, so it is immediately turning back on since when it shuts down it sees that the battery is over 10% and turns back on? I'll test that next.

The key thing though is that it doesn't seem to actually support the shutdown delay. The Cyberpower control software doesn't let me set any settings related to a shutdown delay/startup delay, so I think this device just doesn't support it, even though the UPS_HID interface has a variable for it.

Josh

dennypage

It may not be persistent in the UPS. You might also try explicitly setting offdelay and ondelay in the extra arguments section.

stompro

@dennypage Ohh, I just figured out that CyberPower UPS's take shutdown delays in 60 second increments, and round down. So I was telling it 45 seconds, which was rounded down to 0, so instant shutoff.

I wonder if that is what "ups.timer.shutdown=-60" is supposed to tell me?

So setting "offdelay=60" in the extra driver arguments does seem to work.

Now I just need to figure out the ondelay, since it seems to start back up after that delay no matter if the power is restored or not.... Now I see that there is a note in the usbhid-ups man page about some UPS's starting back up even when mains power isn't present. It says I should set "ondelay=-1" so I'll give that a try.

Next time I'll purchase a model that supports waiting for a certain battery level before restart.

I've been trying to find out where the 60 second interval thing is documented but I haven't found it yet.

Josh

stompro

@stompro "ondelay=-1" sets the UPS to never restart after the power returns, "ondelay=0" seems to say return once power has returned.

I thought there may be a power race condition, but with "ondelay=0" it seems to work. If the power returns right after the system starts shutting down, the UPS will still turn off after the offdelay period, and then it will power back on shortly afterwards(10 seconds) so everything comes back up correctly.

Josh

dennypage

Glad you got it to work. Interesting info on shutdown delay for the cyberpower. I didn’t know that. Thanks.

stompro

@dennypage It looks like there is movement to fix the defaults for cyberpower systems in the future, If the default values were 60 for offdelay and 0 for ondelay then the UPS would just work for most purposes. https://github.com/networkupstools/nut/issues/432 I added my 2 cents to that issue. If you own any other Cyberpower models I would be very curious of the ondelay issue is only with the OR models, or if that is the way they all work?

kevindd992002

@dennypage

Do you fully recommend using the nut package instead of apcupsd for an APC BR1500GI UPS? If so, why?

Also, how do I reset the battery.date variable in nut to the correct date? Mine is set to 2001 which is obviously wrong. I guess I forgot to do a reset in PowerChute when I replaced my batteries 1.5 years ago.

dennypage

@kevindd992002

If you are using an locally attached APC ups, I would say that the choice of NUT vs apcupsd is a matter of personal preference. Both packages are maintained. The apcupsd package offers a more "native" APC feel. The NUT package offers a dashboard widget. Either should work fine.

upsrw is used to set information in a UPS. See the man upsrw man page here.

kevindd992002

@dennypage said in NUT package:

@kevindd992002

If you are using an locally attached APC ups, I would say that the choice of NUT vs apcupsd is a matter of personal preference. Both packages are maintained. The apcupsd package offers a more "native" APC feel. The NUT package offers a dashboard widget. Either should work fine.

upsrw is used to set information in a UPS. See the man upsrw man page here.

I see. What is your personal preference between the two? Are both updated in the pfsense package manager section? When I go to apcupsd's website, I see that the latest changelog there was from 2016, I believe. So I was under the assumption that it wasn't maintained. Can apcupsd also act a server to slave servers in the network?

dennypage

@kevindd992002

When I referred to packages being maintained, I was referring to the pfSense packages. You can see the changelog for the apcupsd package here, and the changelog for the NUT package here.

apcupsd does offer some form of remote protocol support. I'm not overly familiar with it's capabilities other than knowing that NUT has a client for it (described here).

My personal preference? I'm the author/maintainer of the NUT package.

Grimson

I use both, acpupsd to connect to the UPS, act as the NIS and shutdown pfSense when the batts are low. NUT is setup with "Remote apcupsd", simply to have the widget on the dashboard. Best of both worlds IMHO.

kevindd992002

@dennypage said in NUT package:

@kevindd992002

When I referred to packages being maintained, I was referring to the pfSense packages. You can see the changelog for the apcupsd package here, and the changelog for the NUT package here.

apcupsd does offer some form of remote protocol support. I'm not overly familiar with it's capabilities other than knowing that NUT has a client for it (described here).

My personal preference? I'm the author/maintainer of the NUT package.

I see. I knew you were going to say that :)

@grimson said in NUT package:

I use both, acpupsd to connect to the UPS, act as the NIS and shutdown pfSense when the batts are low. NUT is setup with "Remote apcupsd", simply to have the widget on the dashboard. Best of both worlds IMHO.

Sorry, I'm new to including the UPS in the network so I'd have to ask some questions about this. So you're using apcupsd to actually interface with the UPS locally and it controls only pfsense? And then NUT does the signalling to remote clients?

What does "remote apcupsd" mean?

dennypage

@grimson said in NUT package:

I use both, acpupsd to connect to the UPS, act as the NIS and shutdown pfSense when the batts are low. NUT is setup with "Remote apcupsd", simply to have the widget on the dashboard. Best of both worlds IMHO.

I understand that this works... but if you are going to use NUT anyway I think using apcupsd to manage the UPS is a little excessive...

Grimson

@kevindd992002 said in NUT package:

Sorry, I'm new to including the UPS in the network so I'd have to ask some questions about this. So you're using apcupsd to actually interface with the UPS locally and it controls only pfsense? And then NUT does the signalling to remote clients?

No, apcupsd acts as the NIS and remote apcupsd installations control the remote clients. NUT is only used for the dashboard widget. I first tried NUT alone, but it had trouble connecting and reading data from my Back-UPS Pro 1500, the windows client was pretty unstable and it had a much larger ressource footprint compared to apcupsd. If the apcupsd package would feature a dashboard widget I wouldn't need NUT at all.

What does "remote apcupsd" mean?

It's the connection method used in NUT to gather the UPS information from acpupsd.

kevindd992002

@dennypage

I installed apcupsd and noticed some discrepancy with NUT. I'm not sure if this is a bug regarding the BATTDATE (apcupsd) and battery.date (NUT) but BATTDATE shows the correct date of 2016/05/11. While NUT shows the battery.date as 2001/09/25 which doesn't make sense. Any ideas?
Also, is the APCUPSD-UPS drive client of NUT the "remote apcupsd" connection method that @Grimson is referring to?
Is there a guide for NUT that I can read?
With NUT, can you set pfsense and other servers in the network to turn off when the battery charge hits 70%?

dennypage

@kevindd992002 said in NUT package:

@dennypage

I installed apcupsd and noticed some discrepancy with NUT. I'm not sure if this is a bug regarding the BATTDATE (apcupsd) and battery.date (NUT) but BATTDATE shows the correct date of 2016/05/11. While NUT shows the battery.date as 2001/09/25 which doesn't make sense. Any ideas?

Also, is the APCUPSD-UPS drive client of NUT the "remote apcupsd" connection method that @Grimson is referring to?

Is there a guide for NUT that I can read?

With NUT, can you set pfsense and other servers in the network to turn off when the battery charge hits 70%?

The pfSense NUT package reports what the NUT upsc command returns (without interpretation). Either the NUT driver that supports the UPS doesn't handle the string correctly, or apcupsd caches the battery change date in the local file system. I would consider the caching to be highly unlikely, but it's possible. Either way, the best place to enquire would be the NUT mailing lists. You can find information here.
Yes.
Yes, the NUT support site has a user guide and manuals.
Yes, local and remote shutdown is what NUT does for a living. Information on remote access in the second post of this thread. Plenty of discussion about controlling shutdown percentages earlier in this thread. Look for things like this:

ignorelb
override.battery.charge.low = 50
override.battery.runtime.low = 60

See the 'ignorelb' section in the ups.conf manual for details on this.

kevindd992002

@dennypage

Do you have a solution to the Synology slave to pfsense NUT master issue described here?

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/115387/pfsense-2-3-3-cannot-be-a-ups-nut-master-to-synology-dsm-6-1-1-nas/4

dennypage

@kevindd992002 said in NUT package:

@dennypage

Do you have a solution to the Synology slave to pfsense NUT master issue described here?

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/115387/pfsense-2-3-3-cannot-be-a-ups-nut-master-to-synology-dsm-6-1-1-nas/4

Post #2 of this thread has the information on how to set up the pfSense side.

The thread you linked to has the information for the Synology side. The short version is that you have to hand edit the password in the Synology configuration after you set it up. You can google "synology remote nut" for more full examples.