[KLUG Members] Experience with UPS management, please?

[Marr]

On Monday 17 October 2005 10:42am, Michael Lueck wrote:
> >> Avoid APCUPSD like the plague!
> >
> >Any particular reason?
>
> Near clueless development team, sloppy, buggy, etc... Multiple folks
> reported problems with the killpower function of which they shrugged it off
> as "WFM" and thus a few of us moved on to NUT had had things working in
> under and hour. Killpower being sent out to the UPS is kind of important...
> like to reserve extra / remaining battery runtime for example! ;-)

In the most-recent release of the online manual for 'apcupsd':

   http://www.apcupsd.com/3.10.x-manual/manual.html

I noticed this text under 'Change Log for older versions':

   ----> Release 3.10.16 04Nov04
     - Adam has fixed the killpower problem for USB so that the
       USB now properly turns off the power. Nice job.

and this text under 'New Features' (which seems to apply to the 
[already-outdated] 'Release 3.10.17 xxMar05'):

     - Fix killpower on USB UPSes to properly turn off UPS.
     - More killpower fixes for BackUPS Pros.
     - Fix killpower sequence for serial UPSes.

Just curious, does this address the 'killpower' problem(s) you had?

I've used 'apcupsd' before with success (with APC's 'Back-UPS Pro 650' model 
and one of the supplied RS-232 cables connected to my [Slackware] PC), 
although I haven't used 'apcupsd' a lot, so I can't comment on the more 
esoteric features besides basic monitoring and shutdown, which worked fine 
for me.

Back in Jul 2004, I tested 'apcupsd' with the proper RS-232 cable and with a 
couple of different RS-232/USB adapters (Belkin F5U109 and IOGear GUC232A) 
mostly to see how the Belkin F5U109 (used with my APC UPS) worked with my 
earlier kernel patch to the 'mct_u232' module. I submitted some minor 
corrections/clarifications to the 'apcupsd' manual and Kern Sibbald ('Project 
Manager', according to the SourceForge page) eventually got them into the 
docs, but it took a follow-up email to correct some important typos he'd 
made.

Based on my limited experience with the project, I don't know if I'd 
characterize the developers as "near clueless". Considering that Kern Sibbald 
is one of the founders of Autodesk and appears to be retired in Switzerland, 
I'm not sure he's entirely dedicated to spending every waking moment on 
'apcupsd', and I can't say that I blame him.... Let's see -- what to do 
today? -- skiing through the Alps or hacking code? :^) 

P.S. Kern Sibbald is also the author of a popular (GPL) backup utility called 
Bacula (http://www.bacula.org).

Bill Marr