Nut upsuser - Nov 2008 - UPS suddenly powered off

Hi,

I'm using a gamasonic UPS with a megatec driver since two years with no 
problem.
I'm running a Linux server Debian Etch 4.0 and the nut package is ( 
taken from dpkg -l nut )

ii  nut                          2.0.4-4                      The core 
system of the nut - Network UPS Tools

Today morning I found the UPS powered off. I had to manually power it on.

I found the following messages in /var/log/syslog :

Nov 12 20:34:18 pc5 upsd[2372]: Data for UPS [gamasonic] is stale - 
check driver
Nov 12 20:34:20 pc5 upsd[2372]: UPS [gamasonic] data is no longer stale

And after that there are no other messages, until the power up messages 
( so I must conclude that the server was suddenly powered off without 
doing a nice shut down ).

There are two possibilities: the UPS suddenly shut itself down ( very 
unlikely as there was no power blackout ) or the nut driver mistakenly 
gave the UPS a power off command.

Thanks in advance for helping me to diagnose the problem.

Aldo Caruso

More info:

battery.charge: 0.0
battery.voltage: 13.30
battery.voltage.nominal: 11.5
driver.name: megatec
driver.parameter.port: /dev/ttyS0
driver.version: 2.0.4
driver.version.internal: 1.4
input.frequency: 50.0
input.voltage: 215.0
input.voltage.fault: 165.0
input.voltage.maximum: 223.0
input.voltage.minimum: 209.0
output.voltage: 215.0
output.voltage.nominal: 220.0
ups.delay.shutdown: 2
ups.delay.start: 3
ups.load: 0.0
ups.mfr: GAMA SONIC
ups.model: UPS650VP VER1.10D
ups.serial: unknown
ups.status: OFF
ups.temperature: 0.0

Citeren Aldo Caruso <aldo.caruso at argencasas.com>:
> Nov 12 20:34:18 pc5 upsd[2372]: Data for UPS [gamasonic] is stale -
> check driver
> Nov 12 20:34:20 pc5 upsd[2372]: UPS [gamasonic] data is no longer stale
This isn't unusual. Unless the driver already noticed that the UPS is  
running on battery at the time (this would be logged), this is  
completely harmless. The worst that can happen, is that the upsmon  
master decides to shutdown the system, but this wouldn't be a hard  
shutdown. Never versions of the megatec driver will mask out temporary  
communication problems.

[...]
> There are two possibilities: the UPS suddenly shut itself down ( very
> unlikely as there was no power blackout )
How do you know the power was stable? You may not have noticed a small  
glitch. If the UPS failed to switch over quickly enough, the system  
may still have shutdown hard.
> or the nut driver mistakenly gave the UPS a power off command.
Not likely. The driver will log any shutdown commands to the system  
log. Unless you ran the megatec driver with the '-k' command or sent  
it the 'load.off' command, the delay before shutting down the output  
after sending the command is two minutes, so there would be plenty of  
time to log this. Instructing the UPS to power off, requires sending  
it at least four characters, so there is no chance that this happens  
due to random line noise or something like it.

More likely, the UPS switched to battery and failed to deliver power  
long enough to notice this event. What was the result of the  
"test.battery.start" command the last time you ran it? If the battery
is worn out, you won't notice it until it actually has to power the  
load. This better be during a test and not an actual mains failure.

A recommended way to test this would be to load the UPS with a 2 x 60  
W incandescent lamps (adjusting the number of lamps to mimic the  
load), disconnect the mains and watch how long it takes before the  
light goes out (don't power a computer from it at the time). If NUT  
notices the low battery and correctly shuts down the system before the  
light is out, you're safe.

[...]
> input.voltage: 215.0
> input.voltage.fault: 165.0
The UPS switched at least once to battery since the last time it was  
powered on. If this happens regularly, you may wear out batteries more  
quickly.

Best regards, Arjen
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