[plug] UPS's

[Nick Bannon]

On Sun, Nov 05, 2000 at 01:14:50PM +0800, Bernard Blackham wrote:
> List,
> 
> Can anybody recommend a UPS system that's been reliable and useable with
> linux? I've had a look at the APC ones and they come with an opensource
> program that knows when the power is on/off and when battery is low - the
> basics. This is adequate, but can anybody please comment from experience?

Some have simple switches which short your serial lines together for
those conditions, more advanced ones with battery
level/voltage/temperature/etc monitoring may run foul of your dodgy
serial port. <grin>

The LED bar graphs showing load and battery capacity on the APC
SmartUPS's are wonderful - I wish everything had them. "Can we afford
to stick another machine on this UPS? Ah, yes we can."

The most terribly frustrating thing (and it happened to me _again_ last
night) is when you either deliberately test a UPS or get a minor power
glitch, it correctly clicks over to battery power and then... won't go
back to mains. Then you're on a countdown to doom, it will not go back
onto mains and you simply have to shut things down so you can power
cycle the UPS. <sigh> So far it's happened to me with a PC-Might 25, a
PC-Might 35 and an APC SmartUPS 900.

Nick.

-- 
  Nick Bannon  | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick at it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal