On Friday 09 March 2007, Bruno Wolff III wrote: >On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 20:21:19 -0500, > > Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> FWIW, this 'bulldog' software from Belkin does all that, including >> issuing shutdown commands to every specified machine on your network >> that depends on this ups for power should the AC die for some reason. >> That also is why I would like to make it work through /dev/hiddev0 as >> opposed to /dev/ttyUSB0, which requires a $35 cable to implement. I >> have 2 of them tied up now, and I don't want to get into a situation >> where I need to go get another of these adapter cables everytime I go >> to town for beer. > >How about buying UPS's from someone else? Belkin isn't exactly open > source friendly. Yeah, they have some linux programs to support them, > but don't expect that code for their older models will get updated if > access to devices undergoes a major interface change again. > >Other UPS manufacturers supply a lot more detail about how to talk to > their UPS's and at least one sponsors nut's development. That I take it would be APC? I thought about getting one, but what circuit city & staples had on the shelf was 1/3rd the size of the Belkins I've been running with a kludged up connection since 2000 or so. If by the time I need a battery for this one, there are similar APC's on the shelf, then I'll no doubt drop the card for one of those. I'm rather used to decent holdup times, the UPS I had before the older Belkin used 4 each 14AH motorcycle batteries, which it fried dry about annually, but when they were in good shape they could run a system about 175% hungrier than it is now for several hours. We had a tree come down in the middle of an ice storm on mothers day 1999, about midnight according to when the beep woke me up. The next time I woke up it was nearly 5am and it was still beeping gently, so I got up, turned on the monitors one at a time and did gracefull shutdowns on both boxes. That's what I call decent holdup. We got power back 3 days later, had to clean out the freezer, the whole maryann by then. Turned out we were just one little town in several states, all without power for quite a while. Fortunately we did have one self contained wall mounted gas heater, so we didn't freeze any pipes. Others in the neighborhood weren't so lucky. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
