[GNHLUG] NHRuby meeting TOMORROW, Jun 17: Google App Engine and more!
The NH Ruby and Rails User Group will hold its June 2008 meeting at the usual spot, RMC Research in Portsmouth. This month we have the honor of having Brian DeLacey return to give another interesting talk. What's a Rubyist to do when great environments come along but don't (yet) support Ruby? Google App Engine, for instance, only supports Python. Well, of course - Learn Python! It's easy. This meeting will give a quickstart intro to Python for the Rubyist. We'll then take a look at Hello World running on Google's App Engine. You may leave wondering whether Django is Python's jazz improvisation of Rails. To keep things environmentally friendly, we'll do the demos on a newly built, energy efficient PC running Ubuntu and using a just a few watts of power with Intel's new Atom processor. We'll also spend a little time talking about how simple, fun, and inexpensive it was to build this powerful little Atomizer. You may find atomic power is a great way to experiment with Ruby and learn Python. Finally, there will be free book giveaways, courtesy of O'Reilly's user group program. The books will be on the topics of Python and web development. WHEN: Tuesday, June 17, 2008. 7-9 PM. WHERE: RMC Research Offices, 1000 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH. For a map and driving directions, see our wiki site: http://wiki.nhruby.org/index.php/Upcoming_meetings Regards, Scott -- Scott Garman sgarman at zenlinux dot com ___ gnhlug-announce mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-announce/ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Possible OT: power monitoring
All, I have my key systems at home on three UPS battery backups, two TrippLite 900s and a CyberPower 675, all with USB ports for notifying the protected systems of a power failure. I have two questions related to this: Is there a way, using these or other UPS units, to constantly monitor input line voltage and length of outages? I recently had three outages within a week and they seem to have been preceded each time by a few hours of low input voltage (112v-114v) but I'd like to verify that and/or possibly preemptively power down noncritical systems to extend the length of battery coverage. Power quality monitoring would be nice, but my searches seemed to indicate that quality monitoring is much more expensive, and I could find nothing specifically saying that a UPS or quality monitor would report real-time to a computer (specifically SUSE 10.2 or Ubuntu 8.04). Also, is there a way to monitor the power draw of a set of devices (say, plugged into the same power strip and monitor the total) or individual device for the purposes of capacity planning for UPS units, akin to a Kill-a-watt device but with some sort of ability to report its data to a desktop? I have noticed a surprisingly large difference in how long two identical UPS units will last with seemingly similar device loads and would like to be able to determine how large a unit I would need to provide a certain amount of time of backup based on my measurements of average length of (and time between) outages, factoring in recharge times at a given input voltage. I have been looking at getting some new or larger UPS units, and I've noticed there is a nonlinear relationship between price and capacity, which makes me wonder why a person would not buy two or more smaller units and daisy-chain them to get higher capacity and redundancy. Thanks. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: need Openvpn routing help
On Friday 13 June 2008, Ben Scott wrote: Suggested course of action: Use the route command to review the routing tables on the two computers. Just issue the command route with no arguments, and it should print the routing table. Or maybe route -n to prevent the system from wasting time trying to look up names for things. If you're not sure how to interpret the output, post the output (for each computer, identifying which is which), and we can check your work. Ok thank you, here we go, I hope I can explain it well enough for people to understand. Server -- CentOS 5.1 10.8.8.1 Client1 -- WinXP 10.8.8.10 Client2 -- OpenBSD 10.8.8.6 Client1 and Client2 are on different subnets, 192.168.24.0 and 192.168.25.0. I need to create a route from an XP client to 10.10.0.42 on the OpenBSD client. Attempting to set route add 10.10.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.8.8.6 if 3 results in failure, either the interface index is wrong ( interface index 3 is the TAP-Win adapter ) or the gateway does not lie on the same network as the interface. 10.8.8.6 is pingable from this machine and traceroute shows it as one hop, I can ssh in, etc. I get similar error messages (SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable) if I try to set it up on a Linux client. I don't understand how I have to set the gateway, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the gateway should be. OpenVPN server: == Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 10.8.8.2* 255.255.255.255 UH0 00 tun0 63.131.36.0 *255.255.255.224 U 0 00 eth0 10.8.8.0 10.8.8.2 255.255.255.0 UG0 00 tun0 default 63.131.36.1 0.0.0.0 UG0 00 eth0 == Client1 running XP: == Active Routes: Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.24.254 192.168.24.214 20 10.8.8.0255.255.255.0 10.8.8.9 10.8.8.10 1 10.8.8.8 255.255.255.25210.8.8.10 10.8.8.10 30 10.8.8.10 255.255.255.255127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 30 10.255.255.255 255.255.255.25510.8.8.10 10.8.8.10 30 127.0.0.0255.0.0.0127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 1 192.168.24.0255.255.255.0 192.168.24.214 192.168.24.214 20 192.168.24.214 255.255.255.255127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 20 192.168.24.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.24.214 192.168.24.214 20 224.0.0.0240.0.0.010.8.8.10 10.8.8.10 30 224.0.0.0240.0.0.0 192.168.24.214 192.168.24.214 20 255.255.255.255 255.255.255.25510.8.8.10 10.8.8.10 1 255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.24.214 192.168.24.214 1 Default Gateway:192.168.24.254 == Client2 running OpenBSD: == Routing tables Internet: Destination Gateway FlagsRefs UseMtu Interface default 192.168.25.254 UGS 0 2307 - fxp0 10.8.8/24 10.8.8.5 UGS 0 405 - tun0 10.8.8.5 10.8.8.6 UH 02 - tun0 10.10.0/24 link#1 UC 00 - xl0 10.10.0.42 00:08:da:61:5c:68 UHLc03 - xl0 loopbacklocalhost.corp.app UGRS00 33224 lo0 localhost.corp.app localhost.corp.app UH 00 33224 lo0 192.168.25/24 link#2 UC 00 - fxp0 192.168.25.25 link#2 UHLc0 411 - fxp0 192.168.25.25400:0e:2e:b1:1e:da UHLc 00 - fxp0 BASE-ADDRESS.MCAST localhost.corp.app URS 00 33224 lo0 == thanks, --charlie -- Charles Farinella Appropriate Solutions, Inc. (www.AppropriateSolutions.com) [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: 603.924.6079 fax: 603.924.8668 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: need Openvpn routing help
On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:25 PM, Charlie Farinella [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ok thank you, here we go, I hope I can explain it well enough for people to understand. Awesome, now THERE'S some raw data. I need to create a route from an XP client to 10.10.0.42 on the OpenBSD client. Attempting to set route add 10.10.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.8.8.6 if 3 results in failure, either the interface index is wrong ( interface index 3 is the TAP-Win adapter ) or the gateway does not lie on the same network as the interface. Shouldn't need to if 3 argument, it's optional. 10.8.8.6 is pingable from this machine and traceroute shows it as one hop, I can ssh in, etc. I get similar error messages (SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable) if I try to set it up on a Linux client. I don't understand how I have to set the gateway, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the gateway should be. Hrm. Do you have the --client-to-client option anyplace? Can you connect in a way BESIDES ping to the other machines, like, ssh, or telnet to port 22? -- Thomas ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: need Openvpn routing help
On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Thomas Charron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:25 PM, Charlie Farinella 10.8.8.6 is pingable from this machine and traceroute shows it as one hop, I can ssh in, etc. I get similar error messages (SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable) if I try to set it up on a Linux client. I don't understand how I have to set the gateway, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the gateway should be. Hrm. Do you have the --client-to-client option anyplace? Can you connect in a way BESIDES ping to the other machines, like, ssh, or telnet to port 22? This is an excerpt from the man pages regarding the --client-to-client. Remember, OpenVPN doesn't just dump packets, it manages them. These two options are important for what your wish to do: = From man openvpn:: --iroute network [netmask] Generate an internal route to a specific client. The netmask parameter, if omitted, defaults to 255.255.255.255. This directive can be used to route a fixed subnet from the server to a particular client, regardless of where the client is connecting from. Remember that you must also add the route to the system routing table as well (such as by using the --route directive). The reason why two routes are needed is that the --route directive routes the packet from the kernel to OpenVPN. Once in OpenVPN, the --iroute directive routes to the specific client. This option must be specified either in a client instance config file using --client-config-dir or dynamically generated using a --client-connect script. The --iroute directive also has an important interaction with --push route --iroute essentially defines a subnet which is owned by a particular client (we will call this client A). If you would like other clients to be able to reach A's subnet, you can use --push route ... together with --client-to-client to effect this. In order for all clients to see A's subnet, OpenVPN must push this route to all clients EXCEPT for A, since the subnet is already owned by A. OpenVPN accomplishes this by not not pushing a route to a client if it matches one of the client's iroutes. --client-to-client Because the OpenVPN server mode handles multiple clients through a single tun or tap interface, it is effectively a router. The --client-to-client flag tells OpenVPN to internally route client-to-client traffic rather than pushing all client-originating traffic to the TUN/TAP interface. When this option is used, each client will see the other clients which are currently connected. Otherwise, each client will only see the server. Don't use this option if you want to firewall tunnel traffic using custom, per-client rules. end excerpt In your openvpn.conf file, you'd need something that specifies client-to-client, as well as pushed route commands. The CLIENT connection scripts then need iroute entries so openvpn is aware that it is to route traffic for those external interfaces as well, THRU the OpenVPN tunnel. -- -- Thomas ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Possible OT: power monitoring
Sorry for top posting. I have an apc 1300xs that has the same info a kill-a-watt has. Apcupsd will output that info on the command line. You'd have to poll + parse, but that gets it into the computer for less then $100. I've used apc powerchute in the past to get info also. There was a daemon that could log the voltage, amps, and temp sensors. I have scripts somewhere that will gnuplot it. On 6/16/08, Curtis Sandoval [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All, I have my key systems at home on three UPS battery backups, two TrippLite 900s and a CyberPower 675, all with USB ports for notifying the protected systems of a power failure. I have two questions related to this: Is there a way, using these or other UPS units, to constantly monitor input line voltage and length of outages? I recently had three outages within a week and they seem to have been preceded each time by a few hours of low input voltage (112v-114v) but I'd like to verify that and/or possibly preemptively power down noncritical systems to extend the length of battery coverage. Power quality monitoring would be nice, but my searches seemed to indicate that quality monitoring is much more expensive, and I could find nothing specifically saying that a UPS or quality monitor would report real-time to a computer (specifically SUSE 10.2 or Ubuntu 8.04). Also, is there a way to monitor the power draw of a set of devices (say, plugged into the same power strip and monitor the total) or individual device for the purposes of capacity planning for UPS units, akin to a Kill-a-watt device but with some sort of ability to report its data to a desktop? I have noticed a surprisingly large difference in how long two identical UPS units will last with seemingly similar device loads and would like to be able to determine how large a unit I would need to provide a certain amount of time of backup based on my measurements of average length of (and time between) outages, factoring in recharge times at a given input voltage. I have been looking at getting some new or larger UPS units, and I've noticed there is a nonlinear relationship between price and capacity, which makes me wonder why a person would not buy two or more smaller units and daisy-chain them to get higher capacity and redundancy. Thanks. -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Possible OT: power monitoring
Curtis Sandoval wrote: All, I have my key systems at home on three UPS battery backups, two TrippLite 900s and a CyberPower 675, all with USB ports for notifying the protected systems of a power failure. I have two questions related to this: Is there a way, using these or other UPS units, to constantly monitor input line voltage and length of outages? I recently had three outages within a week and they seem to have been preceded each time by a few hours of low input voltage (112v-114v) but I'd like to verify that and/or possibly preemptively power down noncritical systems to extend the length of battery coverage. Power quality monitoring would be nice, but my searches seemed to indicate that quality monitoring is much more expensive, and I could find nothing specifically saying that a UPS or quality monitor would report real-time to a computer (specifically SUSE 10.2 or Ubuntu 8.04). I had a similar problem with cyberpower units. In my case I have an inline generator and those units saw the power from the generator as a power failure. I checked with their tech support and sure enough, anything but 60hz perfect sign wave, perfect input voltage is a no-go. In your case I suspect the same thing is happening. When the grid goes to a low voltage scenario, the ups's are running exclusively from battery like a no power situation. The utter lack of input power conditioning explains why they are so cheap. I replaced them with APC smart UPS units. The APC units come with published input tolerance specs. Sure enough, the APC smartUPS units took a slightly lower input voltage at 58-59 hz and conditioned it, not running off the battery. I gave one of the cyber power units away and the other is now good for propping open a door. (I don't know about the tripplite.) I got the apc XS 1300 retail at staples for about $265. It has input quality and load monitoring that is displayed on the unit's lcd display in addition to the power conditioning. Also, is there a way to monitor the power draw of a set of devices (say, plugged into the same power strip and monitor the total) or individual device for the purposes of capacity planning for UPS units, akin to a Kill-a-watt device but with some sort of ability to report its data to a desktop? I have noticed a surprisingly large difference in how long two identical UPS units will last with seemingly similar device loads and would like to be able to determine how large a unit I would need to provide a certain amount of time of backup based on my measurements of average length of (and time between) outages, factoring in recharge times at a given input voltage. I have been looking at getting some new or larger UPS units, and I've noticed there is a nonlinear relationship between price and capacity, which makes me wonder why a person would not buy two or more smaller units and daisy-chain them to get higher capacity and redundancy. Thanks. ___ 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: need Openvpn routing help
On Monday 16 June 2008, Thomas Charron wrote: On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Thomas Charron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:25 PM, Charlie Farinella 10.8.8.6 is pingable from this machine and traceroute shows it as one hop, I can ssh in, etc. I get similar error messages (SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable) if I try to set it up on a Linux client. I don't understand how I have to set the gateway, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the gateway should be. Hrm. Do you have the --client-to-client option anyplace? Can you connect in a way BESIDES ping to the other machines, like, ssh, or telnet to port 22? This is an excerpt from the man pages regarding the --client-to-client. Remember, OpenVPN doesn't just dump packets, it manages them. These two options are important for what your wish to do: = From man openvpn:: The --iroute directive also has an important interaction with --push route --iroute essentially defines a subnet which is owned by a particular client (we will call this client A). If you would like other clients to be able to reach A's subnet, you can use --push route ... together with --client-to-client to effect this. I had set the iroute directive earlier and was able to ping through to the secondary interface from the server, but not from the other clients. Pushing the route has now allowed the other clients to see the interface as well. Thank you. :-) My last remaining obstacle is allowing the packets to be forwarded through OpenBSD's packet filter. I will do some reading and hopefully will have this up and running soon. Thanks to everyone, you guys are it. :-) --charlie -- Charles Farinella Appropriate Solutions, Inc. (www.AppropriateSolutions.com) [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: 603.924.6079 fax: 603.924.8668 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: power monitoring
Curtis Sandoval wrote: Q1: Is there a way, using these or other UPS units, to constantly monitor input line voltage and length of outages? Yes. Check out NUT, the Network UPS Tools, at http://eu1.networkupstools.org/ -- check the compatibility link for your particular models. Also, I've had a lot of luck with apcupsd, at http://www.apcupsd.org/ for APC-branded models, which have lots of brains and reporting capabilities. In the past I've seen links on these pages to 3rdparty scripts that implement monitoring, graphing, email and pager notifications... Q2: Also, is there a way to monitor the power draw of a set of devices (say, plugged into the same power strip and monitor the total) or individual device for the purposes of capacity planning for UPS units, akin to a Kill-a-watt device but with some sort of ability to report its data to a desktop? Yes, with the smarter UPSes. Yes, my SmartUPS tells me what it's load is. See the status dump at the end of the message. I have been looking at getting some new or larger UPS units, and I've noticed there is a nonlinear relationship between price and capacity, which makes me wonder why a person would not buy two or more smaller units and daisy-chain them to get higher capacity and redundancy. Daisy-chain is not a good ideas, and most manufacturers will tell you their warranties won't apply, for good reason. When the units are on battery power, the UPS circuitry attempts to simulate AC power from DC, and can only produce a rough approximation. A downstream UPS is likely to find this unacceptable, and will trip onto battery power itself. For frugality, I've shopped at a couple of places that sell replacement batteries and refurbished units that are much more reasonable than the shiny new units, if you don't mind a scratch or ding or two. http://www.refurbups has been the source of my last few purchases, and I've been very happy with them. You really want the higher-end units for the circuitry and programmability, but you don't need to pay the premium price for more lead-acid batteries. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ /sbin/service apcupsd status apcupsd (pid 2934) is running... APC : 001,053,1336 DATE : Mon Jun 16 17:43:36 EDT 2008 HOSTNAME : neresus.tedroche.com RELEASE : 3.14.3 VERSION : 3.14.3 (20 January 2008) redhat UPSNAME : SmartUPSNumberOne CABLE: APC Cable 940-0024C MODEL: SMART-UPS 1000 UPSMODE : Stand Alone STARTTIME: Sun May 11 10:43:32 EDT 2008 STATUS : ONLINE LINEV: 118.9 Volts LOADPCT : 40.5 Percent Load Capacity BCHARGE : 100.0 Percent TIMELEFT : 27.0 Minutes MBATTCHG : 5 Percent MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes MAXTIME : 0 Seconds MAXLINEV : 120.2 Volts MINLINEV : 118.3 Volts OUTPUTV : 118.9 Volts SENSE: High DWAKE: 000 Seconds DSHUTD : 020 Seconds DLOWBATT : 02 Minutes LOTRANS : 103.0 Volts HITRANS : 132.0 Volts RETPCT : 000.0 Percent ITEMP: 25.6 C Internal ALARMDEL : 5 seconds BATTV: 27.6 Volts LINEFREQ : 60.0 Hz LASTXFER : Automatic or explicit self test NUMXFERS : 6 XONBATT : Wed Jun 11 10:30:27 EDT 2008 TONBATT : 0 seconds CUMONBATT: 1934 seconds XOFFBATT : Wed Jun 11 10:56:27 EDT 2008 SELFTEST : NO STESTI : 336 STATFLAG : 0x0708 Status Flag DIPSW: 0x00 Dip Switch REG1 : 0x00 Register 1 REG2 : 0x00 Register 2 REG3 : 0x00 Register 3 MANDATE : 10/28/98 SERIALNO : ws9844016836 BATTDATE : 28/03/08 NOMOUTV : 115 Volts NOMBATTV : 24.0 Volts EXTBATTS : 0 FIRMWARE : 60.11.D APCMODEL : IWD END APC : Mon Jun 16 17:44:36 EDT 2008 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Possible OT: power monitoring
On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Curtis Sandoval [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TrippLite 900s and a CyberPower 675 ... [...] Is there a way, using these or other UPS units, to constantly monitor input line voltage and length of outages? Better UPSes can report detailed information like that (sometimes called smart or intelligent). Entry-level models (dumb) often have either no monitoring at all, or just something that tells the PC line power has dropped, and maybe, if you're lucky, low-battery. The dumb models generally use the moral equivalent of a contact-closure. In the old days, they'd most often re-purpose the flow control lines of RS-232 serial ports for this. These days, they do the same thing, but hook the USB up to a USB-to-RS232 serial adapter, since almost nothing has RS-232 ports anymore. The smart models will have an actual data communication protocol, usually run over serial or USB. It often allows for UPS control as well as monitoring. The protocol is usually simplistic and cryptic, but I remember you could hook a VT-220 up to a Ferr-UPS and get a command prompt. :) Based on the info on the manufacturer website, the CyberPower UP625 falls into the dumb category. You won't be getting power quality stats from it. Please clarify TrippLite 900. Checking their website, I find several different products with 900 in their model name. ... a few hours of low input voltage (112v-114v) ... As far as the power company is concerned, 112 VAC is usually not considered low. Anything within 110 to 120 VAC is usually acceptable. Not that that helps you much if your equipment *does* care... Power quality monitoring would be nice, but my searches seemed to indicate that quality monitoring is much more expensive ... Yup. Smart vs dumb is one of the key differentiators between UPSes in different price bands. I could find nothing specifically saying that a UPS or quality monitor would report real-time to a computer (specifically SUSE 10.2 or Ubuntu 8.04). Like anything else, support and features vary with manufacturer and model. Not everything works well with Linux, either. For some models, third-party software is the best bet; for others, the OEM provides good software. I've had experience with various models from APC, TrippLite, and Eaton. Quality and features vary. Nothing was astoundingly bad, nothing blew me away with price/performance. APC is prolly the best-known brand, and sometimes that's reflected in higher prices. (Note that best known is neither necessary nor sufficient for best quality.) I know the APC Smart-UPS line can report information like input voltage, output voltage, load (as a fraction of capacity), battery voltage, runtime remaining, and unit temperature. Their PowerChute software has had various Linux releases of varying functionality and stability. (This information does not constitute an endorsement of APC's products. (The preceding statement does not constitute a condemnation of APC's products.)) TrippLite, Eaton (AKA PowerWare AKA Best Power), and Minute-Man also have smart UPS products, and claim various levels of Linux support. Popular third-party UPS software for Linux includes apcupsd and NUT (Network UPS Tools). Google the project names to learn more. In particular, both projects list hardware known to work with their stuff. YMMV. Caveat emptor. UPS manufacturers love to change things without telling anyone, often selling a very different product under a same or similar name. Their software is sometimes astoundingly badly written. They sometimes regard their communication protocols as proprietary trade secrets. Etc. I have been looking at getting some new or larger UPS units, and I've noticed there is a nonlinear relationship between price and capacity ... Look carefully at the specs. You may be comparing apples to oranges. Some parameters which affect price include: - Load capacity (determines connected equipment) - Battery capacity (determines maximum runtime) - Expandability (external battery packs) - Warranty and equipment coverage - Monitoring capabilities - Output waveform (square wave approximation vs true sine wave) - Transfer time - Operating principle (stand-by vs line interactive vs double conversion vs ferro-resonant vs ...) - Voltage regulation and surge suppression features (these are not inherent in all UPS designs) There are non-technical factors, too. If you're asking for a bigger UPS, manufactures assume you want something better than the bargain-basement crap you usually find at BestBuy, Circuit City, et. al. So the bar for minimum quality is implicitly raised. At the same time, if you're asking for a bigger UPS, manufactures assume you can afford to pay more, and thus charge more simply because they can. makes me wonder why a person would not buy two or more smaller units and daisy-chain them to get higher capacity and redundancy. Daisy-chaining UPSes is sub-optimal at best.
Re: Possible OT: power monitoring
The TrippLite is Tripp Lite OMNI LCD UPS 8 Outlet / 900VA / 475 Watt / Tower UPS, and I agree about the CyberPower, it kept connecting and disconnecting the USB according to the (less important) XP machine that it protects, so I had to remove the USB cable from it to keep the messages from popping up on the taskbar. So far I have not tried to use the USB interconnect on the TrippLites, since one protects my SUSE machine and the other protects a television and some game machines and a cable box. All of these came from Tiger Direct, incidentally, and I think some of my comparison problems come from inconsistent information being provided about the units. Regarding the low line power, it doesn't cause any problems on the UPS but just seems to be a harbinger of a blackout that will involve several blocks around here. Usually this is during or soon after a storm, but the low voltage condition starts well before any storm in all cases I have noticed. May just be a coincidence, but I still get concerned when I don't see a range of 119v-122v like normal. Thanks very much to all, I got a lot of good information on this and it sounds like there is a consensus to my hunch about daisy chaining being bad. 2008/6/16 Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Curtis Sandoval [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TrippLite 900s and a CyberPower 675 ... [...] Is there a way, using these or other UPS units, to constantly monitor input line voltage and length of outages? Better UPSes can report detailed information like that (sometimes called smart or intelligent). Entry-level models (dumb) often have either no monitoring at all, or just something that tells the PC line power has dropped, and maybe, if you're lucky, low-battery. The dumb models generally use the moral equivalent of a contact-closure. In the old days, they'd most often re-purpose the flow control lines of RS-232 serial ports for this. These days, they do the same thing, but hook the USB up to a USB-to-RS232 serial adapter, since almost nothing has RS-232 ports anymore. The smart models will have an actual data communication protocol, usually run over serial or USB. It often allows for UPS control as well as monitoring. The protocol is usually simplistic and cryptic, but I remember you could hook a VT-220 up to a Ferr-UPS and get a command prompt. :) Based on the info on the manufacturer website, the CyberPower UP625 falls into the dumb category. You won't be getting power quality stats from it. Please clarify TrippLite 900. Checking their website, I find several different products with 900 in their model name. ... a few hours of low input voltage (112v-114v) ... As far as the power company is concerned, 112 VAC is usually not considered low. Anything within 110 to 120 VAC is usually acceptable. Not that that helps you much if your equipment *does* care... Power quality monitoring would be nice, but my searches seemed to indicate that quality monitoring is much more expensive ... Yup. Smart vs dumb is one of the key differentiators between UPSes in different price bands. I could find nothing specifically saying that a UPS or quality monitor would report real-time to a computer (specifically SUSE 10.2 or Ubuntu 8.04). Like anything else, support and features vary with manufacturer and model. Not everything works well with Linux, either. For some models, third-party software is the best bet; for others, the OEM provides good software. I've had experience with various models from APC, TrippLite, and Eaton. Quality and features vary. Nothing was astoundingly bad, nothing blew me away with price/performance. APC is prolly the best-known brand, and sometimes that's reflected in higher prices. (Note that best known is neither necessary nor sufficient for best quality.) I know the APC Smart-UPS line can report information like input voltage, output voltage, load (as a fraction of capacity), battery voltage, runtime remaining, and unit temperature. Their PowerChute software has had various Linux releases of varying functionality and stability. (This information does not constitute an endorsement of APC's products. (The preceding statement does not constitute a condemnation of APC's products.)) TrippLite, Eaton (AKA PowerWare AKA Best Power), and Minute-Man also have smart UPS products, and claim various levels of Linux support. Popular third-party UPS software for Linux includes apcupsd and NUT (Network UPS Tools). Google the project names to learn more. In particular, both projects list hardware known to work with their stuff. YMMV. Caveat emptor. UPS manufacturers love to change things without telling anyone, often selling a very different product under a same or similar name. Their software is sometimes astoundingly badly written. They sometimes regard their communication protocols as proprietary trade secrets. Etc. I have
[HUMOR] $500 patch cable
Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I1X6PM/ $500 RJ-45 patch cable Be sure to read the reviews/comments. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Possible OT: power monitoring
On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 7:53 PM, Curtis Sandoval [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The TrippLite is Tripp Lite OMNI LCD UPS 8 Outlet / 900VA / 475 Watt / Tower UPS ... This thing? http://www.tripplite.com/products/product.cfm?productID=3082 Fancy lookin'. It obviously has some line quality monitoring, since it displays info on the LCD. The docs don't make it clear if you can read that info from via software. (You'd think that would be a given, but I've seen stupider things.) But their website does offer their PowerAlert software for Linux. Never tried it myself, but you could give it a shot and see what you get: http://www.tripplite.com/support/download/softwareindex.cfm and I agree about the CyberPower, it kept connecting and disconnecting the USB ... Yah, for just about anything that small and cheap, you can basically count yourself lucky if it holds the load through a two minute outage. All of these came from Tiger Direct, incidentally, and I think some of my comparison problems come from inconsistent information being provided about the units. I find most resellers provide (at best) incomplete information. I recommend checking the mfg websites and doing your downselection based on specs and MSRP. Then shop around for the best price for your chosen unit. Regarding the low line power, it doesn't cause any problems on the UPS but just seems to be a harbinger of a blackout that will involve several blocks around here. Ah, I see. All the UPS monitoring packages I've used (both OEM and third-party) can record data over time. So if you have a smart UPS, you can log the voltage levels. Graphing functionality is often included, too. So yah, that might provide insight into any correlation between voltage and outages. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [HUMOR] $500 patch cable
On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 21:12 -0400, Ben Scott wrote: Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I1X6PM/ $500 RJ-45 patch cable Be sure to read the reviews/comments. -- Ben I don't see what's so funny, this is a perfectly cromulent cable for embiggening your audio experience. ;) -- Coleman Kane ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [HUMOR] $500 patch cable
Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I1X6PM/ $500 RJ-45 patch cable Be sure to read the reviews/comments. -- Ben I don't see what's so funny, this is a perfectly cromulent cable for embiggening your audio experience. ;) And you certainly would not think it funny if suddenly a ten-linear-foot set of orange VAX/VMS 4.7 manuals appeared in your living room along with a very startled cat, just because some doofus hooked the cable between his gigabit ethernet switch and his Canon Pixma 6700 color printer, opening a singularity. When *will* these guys learn to read the manuals first? md -- Jon maddog Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association Board Member Emeritus: USENIX Association (2000-2006) (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
OT: Was: Re: [HUMOR] $500 patch cable
Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote: (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis After mis-reading the punctuation in the second statement above, I could only ponder... Uhhh... Where can I license *my* Linus Torvalds? (It came across in my mental hearing as a colon, used as when reading a list of heraldric titles...) Ok... maybe I'm just tired. Brian ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
