Nut upsuser - Jan 2010 - Eaton / MGE Ellipse MAX 600 USBS and nut

Hi there,

I've replaced yesterday my old UPS with a brand new "Eaton Ellipse MAX
600
USBS".

I've choosed the Eaton (previously MGE) both because I've always been 
extremely satisfied with MGE UPSes of all kinds at work, and because of the 
involvement of MGE (with Arnaud) in nut development, which made me quite sure 
that I would have no trouble with an Eaton (MGE) UPS and nut, where my 
previous old UPS was working OK with old nut versions, but not anymore with 
recent nut versions.

So OK, I went to the Ellipse MAX 600, and have a couple questions / remarks :

- This UPS supporting both serial (mge-shut) or USB (usbhid-ups) 
connections/drivers, is there a choice that is "better" than the other
in
Linux ? Do both drivers / connection methods give access to the exact same 
parameters / information on the UPS ?

- So far I've choosen "serial" for I assume the serial connection
to be
simpler and more reliable (?) (doesn't need any access to libusb,
doesn't need
any filesystem mounted to communicate with UPS...)

Well, once done, this works (see http://www.bouissou.net/ups ) but I'm
puzzled
to see that my new UPS seems unable to display input voltage and that it 
always displays output voltage as exactly "230.0 V" which makes me
think that
this is the "set" value and not an actually measured value.

upsc command output gives the same result : ? output.voltage: 230 ? and no 
"input.voltage" field.

Annoying.

I was wondering if this shortcoming is due to the nut version I'm using now 
(2.4.1.-3ubuntu2), due to the Ellipse MAX 600 itself, or possibly due to using 
the serial connection rather than the USB...?

Also, I've tried to set a couple UPS parameters using
"upsset.cgi", and I
observed the following :

- I could change the default "battery.charge.low" parameter from
"20" to "30".

- But when I tried to change "ups.delay.shutdown" and
"ups.delay.start"
parameters from their default "0" to "20" and "60"
respectively, when I
validated this in upsset.cgi, my UPS immediately killed power to the machine 
(?????) and, when power came back some seconds later, I could see that 
"ups.delay.shutdown" and "ups.delay.start" still both
display "0".

So my question is "is this a bug or is this a feature" ? I won't
play much
with this unless I'm sure, at it seems to kill my server power... :-/

(Besides that, the Ellipse MAX 600 user manual is about non-existent... The 
thing is supposed to be "line-interactive" and there's no
indication in the
manual at all about any way to know when power boost or buck features activate 
or if they even really truly exist... Manual is "2 small pages in 294 
languages", too bad. There's more information on the box itself than in
the
manual :-/ My old UPS had more LEDs and a better manual...)

Kind regards.

-- 
Michel Bouissou <michel at bouissou.net> OpenPGP ID 0xEB04D09C

Citeren Michel Bouissou <michel-nut op bouissou.net>:
> - This UPS supporting both serial (mge-shut) or USB (usbhid-ups)
> connections/drivers, is there a choice that is "better" than the
other in
> Linux ? Do both drivers / connection methods give access to the exact same
> parameters / information on the UPS ?
Unless you're running the SVN trunk (= development) version, it's  
preferred to use the serial connection. The handling of some error  
messages that are returned by the MGE / Eaton Ellipse series in the  
'usbhid-ups' driver is suboptimal to put it mildly. This has been  
fixed in the development versions, but the latest stable release  
(2.4.1) will frequently reconnect to the UPS (which is noisy in the  
syslog).
> - So far I've choosen "serial" for I assume the serial
connection to be
> simpler and more reliable (?) (doesn't need any access to libusb,  
> doesn't need any filesystem mounted to communicate with UPS...)
Mostly true. If you have a serial port (natively, not via a USB to  
serial converter) is probably the most robust way to connect to any UPS.
> Well, once done, this works (see http://www.bouissou.net/ups ) but  
> I'm puzzled
> to see that my new UPS seems unable to display input voltage and that it
> always displays output voltage as exactly "230.0 V" which makes
me think that
> this is the "set" value and not an actually measured value.
Sadly true. I have an Ellipse ASR 600 which also doesn't show a  
measured value (but rather a static one). Which surprised me too.
> upsc command output gives the same result : ? output.voltage: 230 ? and no
> "input.voltage" field.
>
> Annoying.
There is nothing we can do about this. The UPS doesn't return a  
measured value for the input voltage.
> I was wondering if this shortcoming is due to the nut version I'm using
now
> (2.4.1.-3ubuntu2), due to the Ellipse MAX 600 itself, or possibly  
> due to using the serial connection rather than the USB...?
It's the UPS.
> Also, I've tried to set a couple UPS parameters using
"upsset.cgi", and I
> observed the following :
>
> - I could change the default "battery.charge.low" parameter from
> "20" to "30".
Good.
> - But when I tried to change "ups.delay.shutdown" and
"ups.delay.start"
> parameters from their default "0" to "20" and
"60" respectively, when I
> validated this in upsset.cgi, my UPS immediately killed power to the
machine
> (?????) and, when power came back some seconds later, I could see that
> "ups.delay.shutdown" and "ups.delay.start" still both
display "0".
I assume you're using the 'mge-shut' driver, right? In this driver,
the parameters are actually timer (not delay) values which will start  
running immediately after writing them. This is confusing at best. If  
you only want to change the delay values, you must use the 'ondelay'  
and 'offdelay' parameters in 'ups.conf'.

In the 'newmge-shut' driver, the behavior is changed. In that case,  
the delay values will be stored in the driver and only be written (and  
timers started) to the UPS when a shutdown command is issued (which is  
more intuitive). But please note that this will only happen if you  
issue the shutdown command manually.

For automatic shutdowns, all drivers will be restarted in order to  
shutdown the UPS in the system halt script, which means that it will  
fallback to the build in defaults (or the 'ondelay' and
'offdelay'
values from 'ups.conf'). So you can't change this from the
upsset.cgi
pages.
> So my question is "is this a bug or is this a feature" ? I
won't play much
> with this unless I'm sure, at it seems to kill my server power... :-/
You should always do your setup (and testing) with a non-critical load  
connected. Testing with a live server is definitely not recommended,  
unless you've prepared your server to lose power unexpectedly.

Best regards, Arjen
-- 
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