Package nut + Eaton Protection800 connection lost and back twice a day

[DaFarmer]

Hi evryone. First : Big big thank you for the great work on pfsense!
Here is a problem i have since i plugged my ups to pfsense.

I plugged a Eaton Protection station 800 to my pfsense 2.3.4 (nanobsd i386) installed on a Sayse NTSys256/N100.
I installed nut package 2.7.4_4.
Then i entered UPS Type: Local USB, UPS Name: Protection800, enabled email notification, chose driver: usbhid.

On avdanced settings for upsmon.conf i used this conf:

RUN_AS_USER root
POLLFREQ 10
DEADTIME 30
HOSTSYNC 15
NOTIFYMSG ONLINE "Retour du courant sur %s!"
NOTIFYMSG ONBATT "Perte du courant sur %s!"
NOTIFYMSG NOCOMM "Plus de communication avec %s"
NOTIFYMSG COMMBAD "Perte de communication avec %s"
NOTIFYMSG COMMOK "Retour de communication avec %s"
NOTIFYMSG LOWBATT "Batterie presque vide sur %s"
NOTIFYMSG FSD "Arret force sur %s"
NOTIFYMSG REPLBATT "La batterie de %s doit être remplacée!"

Evrything is quiet perfect except one only thing: Once or twice a day, i get mail notifcation (COMMBAD) telling me that pfsense have lost connection with UPS and then 2 ou 3 seconds later got it back (COMMOK).

I was pretty sure it was because of the driver parameter named "pollinterval" set by default to 2 seconds.

On extra arguments to driver (optionnal) I tried tu put this :

pollinterval 10

Nothing changes. and the UPS status page keeps telling me it's 2 and not 10 seconds….
Since then i'm not sure anymore...
Is there anyone having the same problem here? I'd be thankfull for your help.

Have a nice day thanks in advance!

[dennypage]

@DaFarmer:

On avdanced settings for upsmon.conf i used this conf:

RUN_AS_USER root
POLLFREQ 10
DEADTIME 30
HOSTSYNC 15

What are you trying to accomplish by setting these parameters? In general you should avoid setting these unless you have very good reason… Were you running with defaults and experiencing a problem?

@DaFarmer:

On extra arguments to driver (optionnal) I tried tu put this :

pollinterval 10

Nothing changes. and the UPS status page keeps telling me it's 2 and not 10 seconds….

Syntax error. Driver parameters require an equals. See the ups.conf man page.

[DaFarmer]

Run_AS_USER root is to make e-mail notifications work.
I tried POLLFREQ 10 DEADTIME 30 and HOSTSYNC 15 in order to solve the problem i described, but it didn't work.
I'll set all to default again and add  pollinterval=10 in drivers parameters just to see if it solves my problem.

Thank you for your answer.

[dennypage]

@DaFarmer:

Run_AS_USER root is to make e-mail notifications work.

This should not be necessary for e-mail notifications. Are you on the current version of pfSense (2.3.4)?

[DaFarmer]

I was in a previous version when i put the "run_as_user root", now in 2.3.4, you are right no need : email notif are working fine without.
So… after all changes, problem is still here. I don't know what to do.
Time between mail notification of COMMBAD and COMMOK is always 5 seconds and i don't know how to tell pfsense "if UPS doesn't reply 1 or 2 times in 10 sec., it's not that bad" :D

Thanks again for your help.

[dennypage]

It can be either a UPS issue or a USB issue. I would check the physicals: good USB cable, direct connection with no hub, etc. You might try different ports on the motherboard (not all bridge chips behave the same way). For diagnostic purposes, you may even try introducing an external powered hub, which would bring a completely different bridge chip into play.

Software wise, my only suggestion would be increasing the polling interval by using "pollinterval=10" in the Extra Arguments to driver section. The other parameters (upsmon.conf) should not have any impact and can be removed.

[DaFarmer]

I don't think about UPS issue, because it was plugged to a Windows station before and was reporting no communication error

I'll try the 2 other USB ports to be sure, and change usb cable . Let's try external power hub too, i didn't try this yet.
About the pollinterval=10 it's already in place.

Thank you for your help and patience.
I'll give a feeedback asap.