Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
Ben Scott wrote: On Nov 9, 2007 10:08 AM, Paul Lussier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We need to monitor it in the OS to detect the failure on one of the redundant power supplies (it would be tough to detect the failure the second :) Nonsense, that's *easy* to detect. Kind of impacts availability, though. ;-) Oddly enough I'm involved with a Linux-based project which needs to detect that the power has gone out, and, during the run-down of the capacitors, save the state of the system and then automatically resume when the power returns. Or just resume if the power is back before the caps run out. No batteries allowed. Typically power will be off for a few seconds to half a minute. So, while the actual power off does impact availability, not as much as you'd think. Though this is different than the power supply itself failing. That would crimp things a bit. :-) -- Dan Jenkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-206-9951 *** Technical Support Excellence for over a Quarter Century ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
Bill McGonigle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you strike out with the onboard stuff and really need it, one of the booths at LinuxWorld a year or two ago had smart power strips with SNMP. I assume there was some kind of trapping on electrical characteristics. We've got them. APC sells them. That is not an option. We need to monitor it in the OS to detect the failure on one of the redundant power supplies (it would be tough to detect the failure the second :) so we can send an alert. This is for an embedded Linux device resold to customers, who, ideally, use UPSes and do their own monitoring at the power-main level. -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On Nov 9, 2007 10:08 AM, Paul Lussier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We need to monitor it in the OS to detect the failure on one of the redundant power supplies (it would be tough to detect the failure the second :) Nonsense, that's *easy* to detect. Kind of impacts availability, though. ;-) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Power to the Pedants [was: Power supply monitoring in Linux? ]
Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Nov 9, 2007 10:08 AM, Paul Lussier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We need to monitor it in the OS to detect the failure on one of the redundant power supplies (it would be tough to detect the failure the second :) Nonsense, that's *easy* to detect. Kind of impacts availability, though. ;-) Please allow me to rephrase: We need to have the OS detect the failure of at least one power supply. It is imposssible for the OS to notice the complete lack of power in enough to time to make that information useful. :) After-the-fact discovery of a past lack-of-power is not overly useful for sending alerts to humans who may be able to prevent the future/imminent lack of power. I'm sure someone else can say this more precisely and pedantically :) -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power to the Pedants [was: Power supply monitoring in Linux? ]
On Nov 9, 2007 1:32 PM, Paul Lussier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We need to monitor it in the OS to detect the failure on one of the redundant power supplies (it would be tough to detect the failure the second :) Nonsense, that's *easy* to detect. Kind of impacts availability, though. ;-) Please allow me to rephrase: Why on Earth did you take *that* remark seriously? ;-) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On Friday 09 November 2007 10:08, Paul Lussier wrote: Bill McGonigle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you strike out with the onboard stuff and really need it, one of the booths at LinuxWorld a year or two ago had smart power strips with SNMP. I assume there was some kind of trapping on electrical characteristics. We've got them. APC sells them. That is not an option. We need to monitor it in the OS to detect the failure on one of the redundant power supplies (it would be tough to detect the failure the second :) so we can send an alert. This is for an embedded Linux device resold to customers, who, ideally, use UPSes and do their own monitoring at the power-main level. I should have been following the thread more closely, but I suppose that you have disallowed any hardware solutions. If not, there is an easy way to insert a small board between the power supplies with a fly lead off to some interrupt node on the motherboard. All plug-in stuff, no soldering or trace cutting. Costs money, though. Jim Kuzdrall ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
Jim Kuzdrall [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If not, there is an easy way to insert a small board between the power supplies with a fly lead off to some interrupt node on the motherboard. All plug-in stuff, no soldering or trace cutting. Costs money, though. Right. That probably won't fly. A one time NRE might work, but not a per-unit recurring cost. We're talking about shipping thousands of systems. We certainly don't want to get into having to insert boards into each one. Thanks though. -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On 11/7/07, Paul Lussier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's not one the big 3, it's a whitebox platform, but it might have IPMI and/or BMC. It expand a little more on what I wrote: A lot of whitebox servers have a good quality server motherboard, from Intel or Tyan or whoever. Those will generally have IPMI, BMC, and other management features. However, the power supplies will often be dumb units, and will be attached to a separate, dumb power paralleling board. The motherboard then just attaches to the paralleling board as if that were a regular power supply. So just because you see IPMI on the mobo, it doesn't mean you'll be able to find out what the power supplies are doing. Also be aware that there may be capabilities in the mobo which the box builder didn't use. So there might even be sensors indicated as power supply or whatever, but they might not be hooked up to anything. I'd suggest contacting the whitebox vendor if you can. If that doesn't pan out, check with the motherboard manufacturer. Good ones will at least tell you what's present in the mobo design. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
It's not one the big 3, it's a whitebox platform, but it might have IPMI and/or BMC. I'll start looking there. Thanks for the pointers. lm_sensors might have something. I found apcid and ipmitool. The latter looks promising: The ipmitool program provides a simple command-line interface to the BMC. And there's also openipmi, which lives here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/openipmi -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On 11/7/07, Lloyd Kvam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: nut and nut-client Pretty sure Paul is not talking about battery backup units, but rather, the power supplies inside the computer (i.e., AC-DC and voltage conversion). Or can nut monitor those, too? -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 10:54 -0500, Paul Lussier wrote: Hi all, Is anyone aware of means to monitor power supplies under Linux? I have systems which have dual-redundant power supplies and I'd like to monitor them for possible failures so I can send an alert, set a trap, etc. nut and nut-client (The hardest part was getting a cable to connect to the UPS. Their serial connector had bizarre pinouts.) -- Lloyd Kvam Venix Corp DLSLUG/GNHLUG library http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=dlslug ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On 11/7/07, Paul Lussier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is anyone aware of means to monitor power supplies under Linux? I have systems which have dual-redundant power supplies and I'd like to monitor them for possible failures so I can send an alert, set a trap, etc. Like everyone else has been saying, this depends on the hardware. For example, Dell's stuff generally reports via IPMI and the BMC (Baseboard Management Controller), so you can either use standard Linux tools, or Dell's OpenManage(TM) does-everything suite. There are YUM and APT repositories of the Dell tools available; subscribe to Dell's Linux mailing lists for details. For most of the white box hardware I've seen, the power supply hardware has no intelligence and cannot be monitored. You maybe get a buzzer or a light. (You could probably hack something in, but then it's not white box hardware anymore, it's custom hardware.) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 12:34 -0500, Lloyd Kvam wrote: nut and nut-client (The hardest part was getting a cable to connect to the UPS. Their serial connector had bizarre pinouts.) Well sorry about that. I missed the point entirely -- Lloyd Kvam Venix Corp DLSLUG/GNHLUG library http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=dlslug ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
Does lm_sensors have something? IPMI? Do your motherboards support them? Sun boxes have sensors that are read by prtdiag that's hardware OS specific. I suspect hardware will be the bottleneck On 11/7/07, Shawn K. O'Shea [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is anyone aware of means to monitor power supplies under Linux? I have systems which have dual-redundant power supplies and I'd like to monitor them for possible failures so I can send an alert, set a trap, etc. I'm not sure if there's a generic way to look for this. If the machine is one of the big three, they all offer agent software (I believe all free) for monitoring/control of their systems (Dell OpenManage, IBM Director, HP Insight Manager). -Shawn ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
On Wednesday 07 November 2007 10:54, Paul Lussier wrote: Hi all, Is anyone aware of means to monitor power supplies under Linux? I have systems which have dual-redundant power supplies and I'd like to monitor them for possible failures so I can send an alert, set a trap, etc. My Penguin Computing boxes have IPMI on BMC cards that can monitor the hardware. Generally, that's how the big 3 manufacturers do it as well, but they have Windows drivers to talk to the IPMI interface. -N ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Power supply monitoring in Linux?
Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'd suggest contacting the whitebox vendor if you can. If that doesn't pan out, check with the motherboard manufacturer. Good ones will at least tell you what's present in the mobo design. Good ideas. I'm fairly certain we'll be all set. It's a whitebox, but Intel everything. The vendor is a huge OEM reseller for Intel, and they fab all our systems for us. So this shouldn't be too difficult. I think the more diffifcult thing will be getting the IPMI config correct once we figure it all out. Thanks for points in (what appears thus far to be) the right direction! -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
