UPS

UPS, Uninterruptable Power Supply

A UPS is a a device which maintains a continuous supply of electric power to connected equipment by supplying power from a separate source, normally maintenance free lead-acid batteries, when mains power is not available. This removes the risk of losing data in case of blackout/power failure or even a blown fuse.

A computer running on power supplied by a UPS should respect the limited access to energy resources and attempt to reduce its power consumption by stopping processes/daemons and as a last resort make sure all data has been saved and shut down. On a modern x86-compatible ATX computer you can usually set it in BIOS to automatically start up when power has been restored again. Traditionally a serial (RS-232) cable is connected from the UPS to a single machine which will then monitor the UPS. Other machines powered by the same UPS can poll the serial-connected machine over the network for status. Today USB is often used as RS-232 is becoming less common. Larger installations will have a network card in the UPS itself, capable of reporting power status over SNMP.

The package 'nut' (Network UPS Tools) is damon server and a monitoring client included in SuSE for monitoring the status of a UPS device.

Configuring NUT

Links

Novell SuSE NUT Package Description NUT RPM Package for OpenSuSE