Just want pfSense to shutdown when UPS goes to battery

[valnar]

I'm a little confused on whether I should use apcupsd or nut.  My pfSense firewall is on an APU2 box.

Basically I have an APC SmartUPS 1000 and its USB cable is already connected to a Windows server.  I also have the Network Management Card 2 installed in it.  All I really need is for pfSense to shut itself down when the power gets low enough on battery.  My other computers have different methods of dealing with it, so I don't need pfSense to be a traffic director (although after this, I tackle my Ubuntu box, so maybe I DO want pfSense to have smarts in this area??).

I assume there is a network mechanism I can use to have pfSense poll the state of the UPS?

I looked at apcupsd and couldn't figure out the correct combination of parameters to make it work.  I used this, but I don't know if its working:

Enable - Check
UPS name: My UPS
UPS Cable: ether
UPS Type: pcnet
Device: 10.xxx.xxx.6:apc:password
Net Server: On
NIS IP: 127.0.0.1
NIS Port: 3551

Status

Status information from apcupsd
Running: apcaccess -h 127.0.0.1:3551 

APC      : 001,018,0466
DATE     : 2018-01-24 16:32:04 -0500  
HOSTNAME : <removed>VERSION  : 3.14.14 (31 May 2016) freebsd
UPSNAME  : Basement UPS
CABLE    : Ethernet Link
DRIVER   : PCNET UPS Driver
UPSMODE  : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: 2018-01-24 16:31:08 -0500  
STATUS   : COMMLOST 
MBATTCHG : 5 Percent
MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes
MAXTIME  : 0 Seconds
NUMXFERS : 0
TONBATT  : 0 Seconds
CUMONBATT: 0 Seconds
XOFFBATT : N/A
STATFLAG : 0x05000100
END APC  : 2018-01-24 16:52:03 -0500</removed> 

Which package is for me?  I couldn't find the instructions after a cursory look.  Thanks.

[dennypage]

Using NUT on pfSense you have a couple of options:

• Directly monitor the UPS via SNMP

• The NUT client can talk to a remove apcupsd server.

Given a choice, I would choose option 1 as this works regardless of whether the Windows system is functioning or not.

I can't speak to apcupsd on pfSense.