On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:11:55 +1000, Terry Porter wrote:
[color=blue]
> That's what he said to me anyway ....
>
> I decided to buy a couple of new 600 Watt UPS (Uninterruptible Power
> Supplies) about five days ago so headed into town to a local IT shop.
>
> The usual young know-it-all sales guy approached me, and I stated my needs,
> with the disclaimer that the UPS *must* talk to Linux via serial or USB, or
> I'm not interested.
>
> He started by saying "what do you mean by "UPS" because we don't have
> anything like that.
>
> I said "Uninterruptible Power Supplies" ? and he replied "oh we have those",
> but I've never heard of it being called a UPS before" ....
>
> "Not off to a good start", I thought to myself.
>
> He took me to a shelf containing two 600W UPSes, branded "Nova 600 AVR".
>
> "Are they Linux compatible ?" I asked.
>
> To my astonishment this clueless sales guy replies "oh yes, Linux has
> drivers for everything, it works with everything" !
>
> I asked him if he was certain, and he said he was, but I know that Linux
> most certainly does NOT have drivers for *everything* because that's
> impossible.
> For example lots of chip manufacturers insist on a NDA to see their specs,
> and Linux GPL authors will not sign NDAs, etc.
>
> I asked him if he could Google for "Nova 600 AVR Linux" as I wanted
> confirmation these units didn't have any problems with Linux, and just got
> a blank look.
> Do you have any working PCs here ? ...."yes"
> Do they have Internet access ? ...." yes he replied"
>
> "Then get to it" I said, or "I'm shopping elsewhere". He went off and in 5
> minutes was still mucking around so I said, forget it and headed for the
> door.
>
> The boss must have been silently lurking, and not wanting to lose a $300
> sale, he rushed out and announced that the user manuals inside the boxes
> would say whether they support Linux or not, and in a flash opened a sealed
> box.
>
> "It's got the *Penguin*" he happily declared, so the deal was done. They got
> my cash and I went home with two brand new Nova 600 AVR UPSes.
>
> I unpacked one and plugged it in to this workstation,
> watching /var/log/messages as I turned on the UPs. ****, it sees the USB
> device, but isn't claimed by any driver, and no serial device is created.
>
> Not feeling at all positive about Linux compatibility now, I look in the UPS
> CD, and it's a total mess, a ton of models and pdfs, some windows binaries
> and text files.
>
> This is getting worse and worse ...
>
> I find a link to their website for a Linux driver for this exact model,
> beautie ..... ****, foiled again, it's 404!
>
> So I start Googling and find "NUT" a Linux UPS management application that
> looks like it initially came out in 2002, and is still a current project.
>
> Wonder of wonders, the Nova 600 AVR is on their list, with about 400 other
> models for the 'stable' driver.
>
> [url]http://www.networkupstools.org/compat/stable.html[/url]
>
> In my case the MFR for my UPSes is "MGE UPS SYSTEMS" and the driver is
> "usbhid-ups". Note to use this driver a minimum of version 2.2.2
> must be used.
>
> I installed the latest stable driver on this Gentoo box (2.2.2), and this is
> the end result :-
>
> [url]http://test.portertech.org/knutclient.jpg[/url]
>
> So in the end, the sales guy was right after all :)
>
> NUT is really nice, I can access the UPS from anywhere over a LAN, and
> endless possibilities. I could have RRD graph the voltages, or emails sent
> when voltages are outside preset limits.
>
> I could have Festival tell me a UPS somewhere has problems via speech
> synthesis.[/color]

Interesting.
All I did was plug my UPS in and it worked.
Windows of course.

[color=blue]
> Linux, you're only limited by your imagination ....[/color]


And your time.

After takin' a swig o' grog, relic belched out
this bit o' wisdom:
[color=blue]
> JEDIDIAH wrote:
>[color=green]
>> We're talking about an OS that can have conniption fits over
>> something as simple as you plugging in the device before you load a
>> 3rd party driver.[/color]
>
> That's linux.[/color]

Not at all. Most Linux distros are set up to autoprobe most of the hardware
every time you boot, and load the drivers magically.

There are some drivers (e.g. the loopback device) that you may have to
specify in /etc/modules (on Debian).

And you can hardwire that stuff to avoid the time taken for autoprobe.

Let the other guys be the silly bastards in this thread :-)

--
Every cloud engenders not a storm.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"