Nut upsuser - May 2017 - File nut.conf, does mode=netserver means no upsmon?

I'm reading man nut.conf, and trying to understand the MODE directive.

Does the specification mode=netserver mean that only upsd and the 
driver(s) will be started, and that upsmon will not be started?

The man page says "Distribution?s init script should source this file in 
order to determine which components have to be started." But looking at 
the code which starts upsd in the openSUSE distribution, it looks as if 
the file nut.conf is ignored and mode=standalone assumed.  Is this true in 
other distributions?

Roger

On May 29, 2017, at 5:09 PM, Roger Price <roger at rogerprice.org>
wrote:
> 
> I'm reading man nut.conf, and trying to understand the MODE directive.
> 
> Does the specification mode=netserver mean that only upsd and the driver(s)
will be started, and that upsmon will not be started?
I don't think that's the intent - see below.
> The man page says "Distribution?s init script should source this file
in order to determine which components have to be started." But looking at
the code which starts upsd in the openSUSE distribution, it looks as if the file
nut.conf is ignored and mode=standalone assumed.  Is this true in other
distributions?
> 
> Roger
From Ubuntu 16.04's nut.conf:

# The values of MODE can be:
# - none: NUT is not configured, or use the Integrated Power Management, or use
#   some external system to startup NUT components. So nothing is to be started.
# - standalone: This mode address a local only configuration, with 1 UPS 
#   protecting the local system. This implies to start the 3 NUT layers (driver,
#   upsd and upsmon) and the matching configuration files. This mode can also
#   address UPS redundancy.
# - netserver: same as for the standalone configuration, but also need
#   some more network access controls (firewall, tcp-wrappers) and possibly a
#   specific LISTEN directive in upsd.conf.
#   Since this MODE is opened to the network, a special care should be applied
#   to security concerns.
# - netclient: this mode only requires upsmon.

So netserver seems to be a superset of standalone, but it's not clear that
it has to be different. (Tying in firewalls and so forth seems ambitious to me.)

-- 
Charles Lepple
clepple at gmail