[CentOS] 2 questions re UPS management

Tue Mar 19 17:55:25 UTC 2013
Fred Smith <fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us>

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:44:37PM -0400, Fred Smith wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:10:07AM -0400, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> > Fred Smith wrote:
> > > Hi, trying to figure out how the system manages UPS connections. On both
> > > Centos 5.9 and 6.4, merely plugging in a USB UPS device causes an icon
> > > to appear in the top panel, and (at least on 5.9, haven't yet tested
> > > this in 6.4) when the UPS suffers a power failure the system notices
> > > and after a bit does a clean shutdown.
> > 
> > Interesting.... I haven't observed this behavior; certainly not on
> > headless servers, though most are on UPSes; nor, when I had a working UPS
> > for my workstation, have I seen it. Are you running gnome or KDE?

sorry, I forgot to say: standard Centos-5 Gnome installation.

> > >
> > > All this without installing ANYTHING extra.
> > >
> > You mean, like apcupsd?
> 
> Yes, nor "nut" either.
> 
> > 
> > > question #1:
> > > in 5.9 there are two entries in /etc/inittab, one for power fail and
> > > the other for power restoration. The default setting for the powerfail
> > > entry has it doing a shutdown in 2 minutes.
> > <snip>
> > > message (when power fails) about the line being too long. So, I created
> > > a shellscript that runs both the command to tell XP to go down, followed
> > <snip>
> > > When I run this script from the commandline it works just fine. but when
> > > I turn off input power to the UPS it starts the  XP shutdown then within
> > > without waiting the specified length of time, initiates the shutdown
> > > of Linux. Once the shutdown is done, the UPS powers off, thereby killing
> > > the not-yet-shutdown windoze box.
> > 
> > Thinking about this as I write, I'd guess that it expects the machine
> > *receiving* the shutdown to respect the five minute wait. What you might
> > want to do is a sleep 300 before sending the command.
> > <snip>
> 
> just to be sure I'm clear: the shutdown command appears to be sent
> to windows, as I desire. then instead of honoring the "+5" in the 
> local shutdown command it shuts down immediately.
> 
> but if I just run the identical script from a commandline it does
> exactly what I think it should: (1) tells windows to shut down then (2)
> waits 5 mins before shutting down Linux.
-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -----------------------------
                        The Lord is like a strong tower. 
             Those who do what is right can run to him for safety.
--------------------------- Proverbs 18:10 (niv) -----------------------------