UPS for a single system using apcupsd.

[David L Norris]

On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 19:43 -0500, Bob Cahn wrote:
> I'm contemplating buying an APC Back-UPS ES Battery Backup (BE500U). 
> >From reading the HOWTOs there appears to be the APC UPS daemon at
> www2.apcupsd.com.  Can anyone advise if this is a simple or a complex
> project.

Is there any specific reason you want to use apcupsd over some other UPS
service?

> I lose power about once every 2 weeks in winter and it's only
> a matter of time before the disk gets zapped.

Fedora Core provides network ups tools (nut).  I use nut with an APC
Smart UPS 2200, a Tripp-Lite Omni 1100, and several Belkin Universal
1200.  The APC Back-UPS series only provides a simple AC/battery
indication.  Which is fine but you have no indication of how long until
the battery dies.  (At most a minute or two for an APC Back-UPS 500.)

You might consider a Belkin Universal 1200 VA (F6C120).  These work well
with nut and will run for 5 minutes or so on battery.  I've setup two of
them this past week.  The Belkin 1200 supports USB or Serial and has
full AC line and battery monitoring capabilities.  The Belkin Universal
F6C120 typically sells for $90-$130US.  (I've frequently found them for
$80US.)

On my desktop I run this program in addition to the nut service:
  http://www.amautacorp.com/staff/Rudd-O/ups-monitor/

ups-monitor monitors the UPS, shows a status icon (AC line, Battery,
etc), and when the power fails ups-monitor tells (KDE and GNOME) desktop
applications to save their documents and settings.  This way if the
battery fails prematurely any open documents have been saved to disk.


To install nut:
  yum install nut nut-client

To configure NUT for the Belkin I've added the following lines to the
indicated files:

/etc/sysconfig/ups:
  MODEL=belkinunv
  DEVICE=/dev/ttyS0


/etc/ups/ups.conf:
  [belkin]
        driver = belkinunv
        port = /dev/ttyS0
        desc = "Belkin Universal 1200 VA"

/etc/ups/upsmon.conf:
  MONITOR belkin at localhost 1 monuser password master


-- 
 David Norris
  http://www.webaugur.com/dave/
  ICQ - 412039
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