On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Joon Guillen wrote:
> We have a Netstar 600 (says "GIANT power" in front) UPS in the office. It
> has a "remote" terminal which is a DB9 female (a "serial port", except with
> holes instead of pins). I want to connect it to my Linux machine such that
> when battery power is low, the machine shutdowns automatically, etc. etc.
> However, I could find no documentation or online manuals for the UPS. I
> did, however, get some UPS management packages online such as powerd and
> genpower.
I have been doing this for some time now. Most of the trick lies with the
cable. It is necessary for me to make my own cable since it cannot be
bought from computer shops(this case is mostly true for inexpensive "dumb"
contact closure UPSs). I am now using powerd but you might find the upsd
for Linux very helpful(it has a guide for making cables and how to
interface your UPS with upsd).
Here are the pin outs of my Netstar UPS(these are the pins at the back of
your UPS):
5 - low battery
2 - power failure
4 - ground
6 - ups shutdown
these pins are in the following layout:
5 4 3 2 1
9 8 7 6
You can use the pinouts I've given you to maximize the use of your
UPS's features.
If you merely want your computer to shutdown on a "low battery" condition,
the following cable is good with powerd:
UPS side Computer side
+-------Pin 4 (DTR)
-+-
| | <- 10 kiloOhm 1/2 watt resistor
-+-
Pin 5----+-------Pin 1 (DCD)
Pin 4------------Pin 5 (Ground)
If you want to use this cable, make sure to run powerd from your inittab
file and look for the "pf::powerfail:/sbin/shutdown ..." entry in that
file. Change the shutdown command in that entry to "/sbin/shutdown -h
now". Also make the necessary configurations in /etc/powerd.conf such as
getting info from the serial port and pointing to the right serial port.
BTW, the parts of the cable can be bought at electronics shops (Alexan,
Radio Shack, etc.). I'd recommend ribbon cable for the wires. It should be
noted that it might be difficult to solder the wires to the 9 pin RS-232
connectors (the ones at the end of the cables). Also, one of the 9 pin
RS-232 cables must be male while the other must be female.
An easier way of making the cable is to rewire a straight 9 pin male to 9 pin female
cable found at computer stores. All you will need to buy from an
electronics shop is the 10 kiloOhm resistor.
If you have the manual for you UPS, please double check the pinouts that I
gave you. I'm not sure if they've changed it for newer models.
Good luck!
balky
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