Nut upsuser - May 2009 - Battery test feature of APC Back-UPS RS series

Hi all,

I use an APC Back-UPS RS 800, overall my experience with NUT is very
good but there is one feature I am missing: the ability to ask the UPS
for a battery test. upscmd -l shows the following commands available:

$ upscmd -l rs800
Instant commands supported on UPS [rs800]:

beeper.disable - Disable the UPS beeper
beeper.enable - Enable the UPS beeper
beeper.mute - Temporarily mute the UPS beeper
beeper.off - Obsolete (use beeper.disable or beeper.mute)
beeper.on - Obsolete (use beeper.enable)
load.off - Turn off the load immediately
load.off.delay - Turn off the load with a delay (seconds)
shutdown.reboot - Shut down the load briefly while rebooting the UPS
shutdown.stop - Stop a shutdown in progress
test.panel.start - Start testing the UPS panel
test.panel.stop - Stop a UPS panel test
$

As you can see, it is possible to test the front panel, and that works
OK, but no test.battery.start/stop. I would like to know if other APC
Back-UPS RS users see the same problem. If the feature is missing from
the driver, I would like to know why, as well as offer my help to
implement it. I don't know the NUT code at all, but I can help with
testing.

I know the hardware supports it because the Windows software that APC
ships does implement it, and it worked OK last time I tried (several
months ago.)

Thanks,
-- 
Jean Delvare

salut Jean,

2009/5/8 Jean Delvare <khali at linux-fr.org>
> Hi all,
>
> I use an APC Back-UPS RS 800, overall my experience with NUT is very
> good but there is one feature I am missing: the ability to ask the UPS
> for a battery test. upscmd -l shows the following commands available:
>
> $ upscmd -l rs800
> Instant commands supported on UPS [rs800]:
>
> beeper.disable - Disable the UPS beeper
> beeper.enable - Enable the UPS beeper
> beeper.mute - Temporarily mute the UPS beeper
> beeper.off - Obsolete (use beeper.disable or beeper.mute)
> beeper.on - Obsolete (use beeper.enable)
> load.off - Turn off the load immediately
> load.off.delay - Turn off the load with a delay (seconds)
> shutdown.reboot - Shut down the load briefly while rebooting the UPS
> shutdown.stop - Stop a shutdown in progress
> test.panel.start - Start testing the UPS panel
> test.panel.stop - Stop a UPS panel test
> $
>
> As you can see, it is possible to test the front panel, and that works
> OK, but no test.battery.start/stop. I would like to know if other APC
> Back-UPS RS users see the same problem. If the feature is missing from
> the driver, I would like to know why, as well as offer my help to
> implement it. I don't know the NUT code at all, but I can help with
> testing.
>
> I know the hardware supports it because the Windows software that APC
> ships does implement it, and it worked OK last time I tried (several
> months ago.)
>
once more, I don't have much APC knowledges, and we still lack an APC
maintainer for NUT.
so you're somehow on your own.
but, I've found a few info (I guess you're running apcsmart):
- from apcsmart.h,
        { "test.battery.start", 0,                     
APC_CMD_BTESTTOGGLE
},
        { "test.battery.stop",  0,                     
APC_CMD_BTESTTOGGLE
},

with APC_CMD_BTESTTOGGLE = 'W'

from there, you can snif on windows for the command, or... well I don't
know.

cheers,
Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert R&D - Eaton - http://www.eaton.com/mgeops
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://www.debian.org
Free Software Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/nut-upsuser/attachments/20090515/c989b8f8/attachment.htm>