Nut upsuser - Aug 2020 - NUT and CyberPower PR3000LCDRTXL2U

So, a while back I got around to ordering replacement batteries for my
CyberPower PR3000LCDRTXL2U.  When they arrived, I went to swap them in.
 I was horrified at the flimsiness of CyberPower's battery
"trays".
I've seen heavier gauge plastic on "blister" packages in the
store.


I ALSO discovered that the expansion unit had been shipped to me with
one of its two battery trays not even connected.

Well, that could sure account for unexpectedly short runtime, huh?

Anyway, I reconnected it.  Can anyone point me at where the procedures
for runtime calibration using NUT are documented?  Can anyone tell me
whether Cyberpower's behavior on runtime calibration is to drain the
battery to low-power threshold, then keep power on while it recharges,
or to drain to low-power threshold and then kill the power?  I've been
unpleasantly surprised that way before.



-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Babylon Communications
  phils at caerllewys.net
  phil at co.ordinate.org
  Landline: +1.603.293.8485
  Mobile:   +1.603.998.6958

Does anyone know whether it is possible to set battery.charge.low lower
than 20 on a CyberPower PR3000LCDRTXL2U?  'upsrw -s battery.charge.low
15' returns OK, but does not reduce the setting below 20.

Now you may be thinking, "Why would you want to set it lower than 20?"
Because with three battery packs, my calculated runtime is about 35
minutes at my full normal operating load, about twice that after
shutting down all non-essential services, and I only need about 2
minutes from there for a full shutdown.  *10%* would be plenty.  20% is
just pointlessly wasting battery capacity.



(Actually, I wish I could set it by *low runtime*, not low charge.  What
I'd really like to be able to do is tell it, "Shut down these
non-essential servers if we've been on battery power longer than five
minutes.  Shut down *everything* if remaining runtime drops below five
minutes."  But I don't see any way to do that without writing the code
myself.)


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Babylon Communications
  phils at caerllewys.net
  phil at co.ordinate.org
  Landline: +1.603.293.8485
  Mobile:   +1.603.998.6958

On Sat, 8 Aug 2020, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> (Actually, I wish I could set it by *low runtime*, not low charge.  What
> I'd really like to be able to do is tell it, "Shut down these
> non-essential servers if we've been on battery power longer than five
> minutes.  Shut down *everything* if remaining runtime drops below five
> minutes."  But I don't see any way to do that without writing the
code
> myself.)
I've done the essentials of this by configuring upsmon differently on
essential and non-essential servers, and by using upssched.conf.

Here are some of the things you can do with upssched:

AT COMMBAD tripp at localhost START-TIMER upsreset 10
AT COMMOK tripp at localhost CANCEL-TIMER upsreset
AT ONBATT * EXECUTE sms-onbatt
AT ONLINE * EXECUTE sms-online

Not what you want, just illustrating the tools that can be scripted.

Here is a snippet from upssched-cmd:

case $1 in
     upsreset)
         logger -t upssched-cmd "The UPS has been gone for awhile,
resetting"
         echo "$TS" "NOCOMM" >>$LOG
         ;;
     sms-onbatt)
         logger -t upssched-cmd "Sending OnBattery SMS"
         echo "$TS" "SMS" \
                 "The Gathman Server has lost power and is on
battery.">>$LOG
         ;;
     sms-online)
         logger -t upssched-cmd "Sending OnLine SMS"
         echo "$TS" "SMS" \
                 "Power has been restored to the Gathman Server."
>>$LOG
         ;;
     *)
         logger -t upssched-cmd "Unrecognized command: $1"
         ;;
esac

The $LOG file is watched (via inotify) by a process with different 
privileges than nut.  It sends sms and resets the braindead USB on UPS.

Also, early shutdown is easily accomplished for your non-essential
servers:

AT ONBATT * START-TIMER early-shutdown 2000
AT ONLINE * CANCEL-TIMER early-shutdown
AT ONBATT * EXECUTE onbatt
AT ONLINE * EXECUTE online

Late shutdown is done by setting LOW BATTERY shutdown to only set a timer,
which then starts the shutdown.

AT LOWBATT * START-TIMER late-shutdown 300

In ups.conf, you can override what the ups says for upsmon purposes:

[apc]
         driver = usbhid-ups
         port = auto
         serial   = "4B1717P20965"
         desc = "Back-UPS XS 1300G"
         vendorid = 051d
         override.battery.runtime.low = 300
         override.battery.charge.low = 15
         ignorelb

In upsmon.conf, you add EXEC flag to pass the events to upssched:

NOTIFYFLAG ONLINE       SYSLOG+WALL+EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG ONBATT       SYSLOG+WALL+EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG LOWBATT      SYSLOG+WALL+EXEC