backupsd - Daemon for APC Back-UPS and NetBSD

Authors

Dan J. Fraser

About

backupsd is an ultra-simple daemon to handle emergency shutdown of a NetBSD system when a connected APC Back-UPS signals a power failure. This is an ongoing project; suggestions, bugfixes, and additional code are appreciated.

Background

Here is some documentation on the APC Back-UPS. Here is the manual page (71k) that describes the interface, and here is a useful, but linux-centric, HOWTO an UPS interfacing, with a separate section for APC's hardware.

Future

Right now, this program performs an ultra-messy shutdown of NetBSD. This has to get more elegant in the future, if it's going to be properly useful. This is my first attempt at writing any sort of program that has to work closely with NetBSD, and as such, it's probably wrong. Hopefully this wrongness will eventually be corrected.

Maybe I'll design some hardware to delay the poweroff signal. That would make shutdown quite a bit easier.

The UPS also emits a low battery signal, but at TTL (not RS-232) levels, that I'd like to use. Also, somehow, APC's PowerChute software detects if a Back-UPS is connected. I wonder how that works.

Hardware

My shutdown cable looks like this: (a subset APC's):

        DB9 Female (serial end)          DB9 Male (UPS end)
       
            GND   5  -----------------------------  4  GND
        CTS   8  <----------------------------  2  Line Fail
            DTR   4  ---------------------------->  1  Shutdown

Build it, or feel free to buy APC's.

UPDATE: Quite a while ago, Dave Angus sent me this email about what's inside the cable. I apologize for not posting it before now.

Source Code

License: Public Domain (no GPL virus)

Archived:

Recent Changes

1.1 Make tty open non-blocking, changing timing of log messages to better indicate a false start, and added increased checking to ensure DTR was actually dropped.
1.0 Initial Version

 $Id: index.html,v 1.8 2001/05/30 13:55:36 dfraser Exp $

Dan J. Fraser (dfraser@mother.com)