CentOS - Jan 2010 - apcupsd

Here's an odd one: I installed apcupsd, and it works with most of our
UPSs. I'd swear it worked on this one. Then I replaced the Gin-u-wine APC
batteries, which were dead, with new ones, non-APC. They're just dumb
batteries, no chips or whatever on them.

If I hook it up using a serial cable, I can get info. If I hook it up the
way I had it, with APC's weird USB cable - and this is the way it was
working before - it fails. I run apctest, and it gives me:

Attached to driver: usb
sharenet.type = DISABLE
cable.type = USB_CABLE

You are using a USB cable type, so I'm entering USB test mode
mode.type = USB_UPS
Setting up the port ...
Hello, this is the apcupsd Cable Test program.
This part of apctest is for testing USB UPSes.

Getting UPS capabilities...SUCCESS

Then I tell it to do the self test, and get:

This test instructs the UPS to perform a self-test
operation and reports the result when the test completes.

Clearing previous self test result...CLEARED
Initiating self test...INITIATED
Waiting for test to complete...ERROR READING STATUS
12.976 apcupsd: linux-usb.c:802 HIDIOCGREPORT for function SelftestStatus
failed. ERR=Input/output error

Now, I've even found an rpm that was *not* two+ years old, as what comes
with CentOS 5.4, current update, and get the same error.

In addition, even though the batteries are fully charged, and the info I
get via the serial cable says they're at 100%, the red "change
battery"
light is still on on the front of the UPS. Hitting the "test" button
doesn't help; I was hoping running the self-test that's available via
the
USB connection would reset it, but I can't do that.

Any clues for the poor?

             mark

m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Here's an odd one: I installed apcupsd, and it works with most of our
> UPSs. I'd swear it worked on this one. Then I replaced the Gin-u-wine
APC
> batteries, which were dead, with new ones, non-APC. They're just dumb
> batteries, no chips or whatever on them.
>
> If I hook it up using a serial cable, I can get info. If I hook it up the
> way I had it, with APC's weird USB cable - and this is the way it was
> working before - it fails. I run apctest, and it gives me:
>
> Attached to driver: usb
> sharenet.type = DISABLE
> cable.type = USB_CABLE
>
> You are using a USB cable type, so I'm entering USB test mode
> mode.type = USB_UPS
> Setting up the port ...
> Hello, this is the apcupsd Cable Test program.
> This part of apctest is for testing USB UPSes.
>
> Getting UPS capabilities...SUCCESS
>
> Then I tell it to do the self test, and get:
>
> This test instructs the UPS to perform a self-test
> operation and reports the result when the test completes.
>
> Clearing previous self test result...CLEARED
> Initiating self test...INITIATED
> Waiting for test to complete...ERROR READING STATUS
> 12.976 apcupsd: linux-usb.c:802 HIDIOCGREPORT for function SelftestStatus
> failed. ERR=Input/output error
>
> Now, I've even found an rpm that was *not* two+ years old, as what
comes
> with CentOS 5.4, current update, and get the same error.
>
> In addition, even though the batteries are fully charged, and the info I
> get via the serial cable says they're at 100%, the red "change
battery"
> light is still on on the front of the UPS. Hitting the "test"
button
> doesn't help; I was hoping running the self-test that's available
via the
> USB connection would reset it, but I can't do that.
>
> Any clues for the poor?
>
>              mark
>
>   
Funny, after reading the above, I decided to try the apcupsd with my new 
fancy APC with the LCD display and everything. Got very similar results. 
Gnome Power Manager recognizes it from the get go, just with decreased 
functionality. It would be nice to have Centos able to 'plug' into all 
of its features and diagnostics. I'm  running 5.4 on a hardware raid 10 
server....old Adaptec 2400A with 128 megs of cache. This machine seems 
to have problems with the partition managers as well. Could LVM be 
getting in the way somehow?

Ed