Nut upsdev - Aug 2011 - naming a new Mac OS X UPS driver

I've been working on a meta-driver that tries to address one of the  
difficulties of using NUT on a Mac OS X system which has built-in  
drivers for several USB-connected UPSes.

On a stock OS X system, after you plug in a system-supported UPS, a  
new "UPS" tab shows up in the "Energy Saver" system
preferences panel.
Basic status information is presented there, and additional  
information is updated in the dynamic system configuration store. I  
would like to pass this information along to NUT's upsd so for  
monitoring purposes, as well as to enable the controlled shutdown of  
nearby systems (e.g. clients of a file server).

An interesting side effect is that the internal battery on a laptop is  
monitored in the same way as an UPS. So I am not sure if "nut-macosx- 
ups" is the best name for the driver. I think that a meta-driver like  
this probably should have "bridge" in the name, since it is  
essentially bridging the NUT variable namespace with the system  
configuration namespace. On the other hand, the new IPMI driver is  
just called "nut-ipmipsu".

Ideas?

-- 
Charles Lepple
clepple at gmail

Hey Charles,

2011/8/12 Charles Lepple <clepple at gmail.com>
> I've been working on a meta-driver that tries to address one of the
> difficulties of using NUT on a Mac OS X system which has built-in drivers
> for several USB-connected UPSes.
>
> On a stock OS X system, after you plug in a system-supported UPS, a new
> "UPS" tab shows up in the "Energy Saver" system
preferences panel. Basic
> status information is presented there, and additional information is
updated
> in the dynamic system configuration store. I would like to pass this
> information along to NUT's upsd so for monitoring purposes, as well as
to
> enable the controlled shutdown of nearby systems (e.g. clients of a file
> server).
>
> An interesting side effect is that the internal battery on a laptop is
> monitored in the same way as an UPS. So I am not sure if
"nut-macosx-ups" is
> the best name for the driver. I think that a meta-driver like this probably
> should have "bridge" in the name, since it is essentially
bridging the NUT
> variable namespace with the system configuration namespace. On the other
> hand, the new IPMI driver is just called "nut-ipmipsu".
>
nut-ipmipsu is actually a driver, in the way that it acquires data from a
device (component here, not peripheral).

> Ideas?
>
very interesting.

this is very similar to the HAL / UPower (using the system provided PM
integration)!
but you have a converse approach: consume data from this source.
does this means that using this source is better (in terms of data and
features provided)?
and / or that NUT drivers can't replace (as with UPower) OS X' one(s)?
is this still limited to USB HID?

my last idea on UPower (and similar needs) was to change the driver dstate
layer (which is used for communication with upsd) to a plugin system style.
the default would still be to load the classic dstate. but alternative would
be provided for DBus / UPower and any other kind of useful protocols.

cheers,
Arnaud
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