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@doxymoron Unfortunately the term "shutdown" is a little overloaded. Is used to refer to initiating a shutdown of the operating system, and also to refer to sending a command to the ups to kill the mains.
When a low battery condition is determined to exist, nut initiates a shutdown of the operating system. The os shutdown can take seconds or minutes depending upon the operating system and what is running on it. As one of the final steps of the shutdown, the os calls back into nut which issues the kill command to the ups. This is where the delay described by ups.delay.shutdown comes into effect--the ups waits this amount of time before killing the mains. Usually the 20 seconds is sufficient because the os isn't doing much other than syncing disk buffers for a few seconds followed by a halt.
Compared to pfSense, ESXi can take a very long time to shut down. To get a better handle on this, you might want to consider running a nut slave on the ESXi server. Yes, surprisingly there is one available. A quick write up using FreeNAS can be found here. Using a remote client may give you a little more time and flexibility in how the ESXi shutdown works. Note that I do not have direct experience with the ESXi client and cannot answer questions about it, but there may be others here who have experience with it...
The pfSense information needed for enabling remote clients can be found in the second post of this thread.
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Thanks so much for helping me, I understand a bit more. I do actually have the ESXi client installed that should properly shut down the host and all VMs. I think the problem I ran into was that from the time the low battery condition hit, to when the Pfsense box shutdown, and then the UPS itself shutdown, was just too fast. The ESXi server did not have time to do any of the proper shutting down before it lost power. I will test tomorrow to see if increasing the ups.delay.shutdown will help. If it delays the shutting down of the UPS, I think it should.
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@doxymoron You may also wish to look at the HOSTSYNC variable, which would be set in the upsmon.conf section of the advanced settings.
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Hi, every time I restart my pfsense box, I need to manually run:
/usr/local/sbin/upsdrvctl -u root start
To get the UPS driver to start.
I noticed it has the below in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/nut.sh
/usr/local/sbin/upsdrvctl start & sleep 1
But editing nut.sh just gets reset after a reboot. Any suggestions please? -
@lesodm Need more information to help.
- What type of ups?
- What ups settings do you have you in Services / UPS / Settings?
- Following reboot, what entries are there in the system log (Status / System Logs / System / General) matching "ups" or "nut"?
- How are you determining that you need to run upsdrvctl?
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@lesodm said in NUT package:
I noticed it has the below in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/nut.sh
So it's run (started) when you boot.
Check dmesg and other logs why it fails.edit :
If iI start in manually :[2.4.4-RELEASE][admin@pfsense.brit-hotel-fumel.net]/usr/local/pkg/nut: /usr/local/sbin/upsdrvctl start Network UPS Tools - UPS driver controller 2.7.4 Network UPS Tools - Generic HID driver 0.41 (2.7.4) USB communication driver 0.33 Duplicate driver instance detected! Terminating other driver! Broadcast Message from root@pfsense.brit-hotel-fumel.net (no tty) at 11:21 CET... Communications with UPS ups lost Using subdriver: APC HID 0.96 Broadcast Message from root@pfsense.brit-hotel-fumel.net (no tty) at 11:21 CET... Communications with UPS ups establishedwhich means : it was already running - it switches driver instance, the USB connection got kicked, NUT connects again => all is well.
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@dennypage,
*Local USB
*Settings: Driver blazer and listen port settings in upsd.conf and user settings in upsd.users
*There is this error every 5 seconds in the system log:
41044 Poll UPS [UPS] failed - Driver not connected
*UPS connects and reports all info back once I run upsdrvctl@Gertjan there is a ton of these messages in dmesg:
<INNO TECH USB to Serial> at usbus1 (disconnected) -
@lesodm You are using a USB to serial adapter? Please post the output of "usbconfig dump_device_desc"
Please post the actual settings you have in the pfSense GUI (Services / UPS / Settings). Either a screen shot or the XML data from the config.
Please post the log messages that match any of these strings, "usb", "ups", or "nut" for the 2 minutes following reboot.
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@dennypage it's a USB A to B printer cable.
I might have resolved the issue by adding maxretry = 3 to ups.conf. After last nights power outage the UPS reconnected itself. However I see in syslog it reconnects every now and then, something still not 100% then maybe?
"usbconfig dump_device_desc": usbconfig dump.txt
Status/SystemLogs/System/General messages that match any of these strings, "usb", "ups", or "nut" following reboot: Syslog-USB.txt Syslog-UPS.txt Syslog-nut.txt
Actual settings:
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@dennypage said in NUT package:
@doxymoron You may also wish to look at the HOSTSYNC variable, which would be set in the upsmon.conf section of the advanced settings.
Thanks for your help. I was able to get this working by just giving my 2 ESXi servers 2 minutes to shutdown before powering off the UPS using the override.ups.delay.shutdown option. I do have another question. If I were to get another UPS, am I able to also connect it via USB to my pfsense box and also monitor it? Thanks.
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@lesodm [Sorry for the delay, I'm traveling]
Okay, several things now come to mind. Firstly, I'm going to assume that the usb to serial converter is imbedded in the ups itself and not something that you have separately installed. Btw, you didn't say what the manufacturer/model of the ups was.
First, please ensure you can get into the box via ssh because I want you to run the following tests without anything but the ups connected via usb. In other words, no usb keyboard, no usb mouse. I'm also assuming that at this point you are not using an external usb hub. Please confirm.
- Disable nut. Go into Services / UPS, select Disabled from the UPS Type drop down list, and press save.
- Reboot pfSense.
- Log in via ssh.
- Run "usbconfig dump_device_desc" and save the output.
- Run "ls -l /dev/cua*"
- Move the usb connection to a different port on the motherboard.
- Repeat steps 4-6 until you have tested all of the usb ports. Keep track of which port goes with which output.
Please post the results.
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@doxymoron said in NUT package:
Thanks for your help.
You're quite welcome.
I do have another question. If I were to get another UPS, am I able to also connect it via USB to my pfsense box and also monitor it?
While nut itself has that capability, the pfSense gui does not. Were you thinking of a second ups that would provide power to the pfSense box via a redundant power supply? Or were you thinking of a second ups that provides power to another system (and are just looking for a way to monitor it)? If the latter, it's better to monitor it using the system whose power the ups controls. If that isn't available, you could also monitor it using nut in a lightweight guest running under the ESXi server.
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@dennypage I was looking to separate the load and add a second UPS for my second ESXi server and network equipment. I will look into running another nut server inside a VM on that ESXi server, that seems like the best way. Thanks.
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@dennypage
Hi, thanks for getting back to me. Only now been able to reboot.
Its a Tescom Otima Plus 3000 NM UPS.
No USB hub, though keyboard and mouse is connected via a KVM switch but I unplugged this before rebooting and testing.
Results for the 6 ports running "usbconfig dump_device_desc": port6.txt port5.txt port4.txt port3.txt port2.txt port1.txt
Ports 5 and 6 where through a PCI USB card
Running "ls -l /dev/cua*" has no results. -
@lesodm Based upon earlier logs, it looks like the USB serial adapter is taking a bit of time to initially appear on the bus, and subsequently disappearing and reappearing.
Most often I've seen this with older devices combined with usb 3 ports. Sometimes you even have to use an external hub to address the problem. My main server is unfortunately in this camp.
Things that I would recomend:
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Focus on the disappearing problem first. The initial boot problem can be revisited (if it still exists) once the stability problem is determined.
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Do not use the built-in usb 3 controller (port 1/2). This is the controller most likely to have issues with older devices.
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Try the built-in usb 2 controller (port 3/4) first.
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Try the add-on usb 2 controller (port 5/6).
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Try using an external hub on any of the ports. I'm using an inexpensive Amazon hub on mine.
[Btw, I do not see the UPS connected when you did the scan of port 4...]
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@dennypage, the disappearing issue is resolved in any of the USB 2 ports but only once the UPS driver has been loaded, the below error continues until I load the driver:
ugen0.3: <INNO TECH USB to Serial> at usbus0
ugen0.3: <INNO TECH USB to Serial> at usbus0 (disconnected)
And the driver now loads on boot as well. So looks like all sorted thanks!! -
@lesodm Glad to know it's working. Strange to see the disconnects on boot, but I Google'd a bit and saw others commenting about seeing continual disconnects with the Inno Tech until something opens the usb port. Perhaps something to do with how the Inno Tech usb to serial adapter is designed.
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@dennypage, thanks again for all the previous help.
I am having issues at one of my other branches with a new UPS but can't pickup the UPS at all.
UPS Model: UDC9102S-RT SATURN : RM 2K ON-LINE UPS SR IB
Same settings in pfsense as the previous server.
Trying to start the driver but get below output:
/usr/local/sbin/upsdrvctl -u root start
Network UPS Tools - UPS driver controller 2.7.4
Network UPS Tools - Megatec/Q1 protocol USB driver 0.12 (2.7.4)
No supported devices found. Please check your device availability with 'lsusb'
and make sure you have an up-to-date version of NUT. If this does not help,
try running the driver with at least 'subdriver', 'vendorid' and 'productid'
options specified. Please refer to the man page for details about these options
(man 8 blazer_usb). -
@lesodm said in NUT package:
No supported devices found. Please check your device availability with 'lsusb' and make sure you have an up-to-date version of NUT. If this does not help, try running the driver with at least 'subdriver', 'vendorid' and 'productid' options specified. Please refer to the man page for details about these options (man 8 blazer_usb).
'lsusb' is a command on Linux. For FreeBSD, which pfSense is based upon, the equivalent is usbconfig. Use "usbconfig dump_device_desc" to see the list of devices just like you did on the other host.
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@dennypage, thanks, sorry I should have given you more info on my troubleshooting before hand. I haven't used usbconfig before and couldn't see in the man page or comparing to the previous results what identifies the USB device to which port.
This sites firewall has 6 usb ports but only shows 2 in Usbconfig: usbconfig.txt
Tried switching to a few ports but I couldn't see anything changing to the output of usbconfig, what would I be looking for?
Dmesg output when I change between USB ports: dmesg.txt
