# [OmniOS-discuss] usb hid ups monitoring

Denis Cheong denis at denisandyuki.net
Mon Jun 2 09:39:58 UTC 2014

- Previous message: [OmniOS-discuss] usb hid ups monitoring
- Next message: [OmniOS-discuss] usb hid ups monitoring
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

    The principal benefit of ethernet is that you avoid all the driver / port
    issues (at the expense of, as Paul said, the risk that your switch goes
    down before the server / UPS and you lose connectivity - if it is not on
    the same UPS).

    USB support can be tricky in OmniOS - it obviously doesn't support
    everything and is more likely to have issues that are difficult to diagnose
    / rectify.

    Serial support may be fine, but a hacked-together cable like that is
    obviously not production-ready.  The UPSs come included with a cable, but
    if it's been lost then a standard straight-through serial cable is not a
    drop-in replacement (although they can be found on ebay easily enough).
    Also, these days very few motherboards come with RS232 onboard - and USB to
    serial adapters pretty much suck; there are so many that have tiny
    differences in their chipsets that they frequently don't work (this is
    especially troublesome on Windows but I have not tried it in OmniOS - where
    support may also be limited).

    On 2 June 2014 17:41, Olaf Marzocchi <lists at marzocchi.net> wrote:

    > I was actually going to suggest you to try the apcupsd software if you
    > have problems with the other ones.
    > And also, those serial cables are extremely simple, I made one with some
    > loose wires held together with sticky tape and soldered to serial plugs. I
    > cannot even call it "cable".
    > I am monitoring a Smart UPS 700 via serial and apcupsd and I can also
    > check UPS load, temperature, ...
    >
    > What are the advantages of the NUT and sntp you mentioned over apcupsd?
    >
    > Regards,
    > Olaf Marzocchi
    >
    >
    >
    > Il giorno 02/giu/2014, alle ore 06:50, Denis Cheong <
    > denis at denisandyuki.net> ha scritto:
    >
    > Fair enough - bear in mind that the serial port on Smart UPSs require a
    > special cable, they are not simple serial despite their appearance.
    >
    >
    > On 2 June 2014 14:28, Paul B. Henson <henson at acm.org> wrote:
    >
    >> I actually do have a network management card in the unit, and was
    >> originally thinking of monitoring via the snmp driver :). However, the ups
    >> for the server is not the same ups as for the network gear, and at least
    >> for now the server ups has about twice the runtime as the network ups 8-/,
    >> so my connection to the ups would drop before it ran out of juice :(. I'm
    >> not sure what nut would do in such a circumstance, extrapolate from the
    >> last reading or consider the ups dead. It seems safer all around to just
    >> have a direct connection to the ups in this case. It also has a serial
    >> port, so I could try that if USB fails me, but I'd rather use USB. It's
    >> trivial to get going under linux, pretty much just plug and play. It would
    >> be nice to get a similar level of usability for illumos distributions. I
    >> hear talk on and off of doing a rip and replace of the entire illumos USB
    >> stack, that's usually in the context of adding usb3 support, I don't know
    >> if that would make use cases like this easier too.
    >>
    >> Thanks...
    >>
    >> On Jun 1, 2014, at 8:42 PM, Denis Cheong <denis at denisandyuki.net> wrote:
    >>
    >> I am monitoring the exact same UPS on my OmniOS box, with NUT configured
    >> as per the old Oracle blog - however I have it connected through a network
    >> interface.
    >>
    >> If you have issues with connecting it via USB, I suggest you consider
    >> adding a network card which is likely to be much easier to get up and
    >> running.
    >>
    >>
    >> On 2 June 2014 13:29, Paul B. Henson <henson at acm.org> wrote:
    >>
    >>> So I've got an older APC Smart-UPS 1500 which I'd like to monitor from
    >>> omnios via usb. I plugged it into one of my linux boxes just to verify
    >>> how it presented the usb interface, and NUT said:
    >>>
    >>> driver = "usbhid-ups"
    >>>         port = "auto"
    >>>         vendorid = "051D"
    >>>         productid = "0002"
    >>>         product = "Smart-UPS 1500 RM FW:617.3.D USB FW:1.5"
    >>>         serial = "AS0411320933"
    >>>         vendor = "TRIPP LITE"
    >>>         bus = "002"
    >>>
    >>> So I believe NUT should support it with the standard hid driver. I went
    >>> looking for how to setup usb ups support under omnios, and didn't find
    >>> too much. Most of the results for Solaris talk about forcing the device
    >>> to use the ugen driver rather than the hid driver, but I found some
    >>> posts on the NUT mailing list saying that's not really needed anymore,
    >>> and you should be able to monitor it as a hid device.
    >>>
    >>> At this point, I've got it plugged in, and it shows up as:
    >>>
    >>> usb3/1.2                       usb-input    connected    unconfigured ok
    >>>
    >>> usb3/1.2                       connected    unconfigured ok         Mfg:
    >>> American Power Conversion  Product: Smart-UPS 1500 RM FW:617.3.D USB
    >>> FW:1.5  NConfigs: 1  Config: 0  : 1
    >>>
    >>> It looks like it's connecting as a HID device, although it's showing up
    >>> as unconfigured. I haven't installed NUT yet, so maybe it will be as
    >>> simple as running it and the device will be automagically configured and
    >>> start working ;). But while I'm spinning up NUT, I wanted to see if
    >>> there was any more up to date advice on how to monitor a usb hid type
    >>> ups under omnios.
    >>>
    >>> Thanks...
    >>>
    >>> _______________________________________________
    >>> OmniOS-discuss mailing list
    >>> OmniOS-discuss at lists.omniti.com
    >>> http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/omnios-discuss
    >>>
    >>
    >>
    > _______________________________________________
    > OmniOS-discuss mailing list
    > OmniOS-discuss at lists.omniti.com
    > http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/omnios-discuss
    >
    >
    > _______________________________________________
    > OmniOS-discuss mailing list
    > OmniOS-discuss at lists.omniti.com
    > http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/omnios-discuss
    >
    >
    -------------- next part --------------
    An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
    URL: <http://lists.omniti.com/pipermail/omnios-discuss/attachments/20140602/9451d8d6/attachment.html>

- Previous message: [OmniOS-discuss] usb hid ups monitoring
- Next message: [OmniOS-discuss] usb hid ups monitoring
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

More information about the OmniOS-discuss mailing list