On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 07:27:01 -0600, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
Jim Flanagan wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to set up an APC Back_UPS XS 1500 battery backup? This APC ups works with a USB cable on the PC side connecting to an RJ-45 plug in the back of the ups. I'm using Suse 8.2. The apcupsd that comes with 8.2 does not seem to know how to handle the usb connection. Nor does the PowerChute I downloaded from APC, it only seems to work with serial. I tried installing rpm's from suse ftp for suse 9.0 and 9.1, but they have too many dependencies on 8.2.
Does anyone have an rpm for a newer version of apcupsd for suse 8.2?
I don't think upgrading to a newer apcupsd version is going to help you. According to both the apcupsd and nut (network UPS tools) websites, you need a kernel 2.4.13 or later to have the necessary USB support available. Further, according to apcupsd, up until 2.4.22, the kernel binds the USB device to the wrong driver (for those using 2.6.5 and later kernels, apcupsd claims there is a defect in hiddev.h which requires upgrading to apcupsd version 3.10.14 or later, but that certainly is not an issue for a default 8.2 installation). The apcupsd website says an upgrade to 2.4.22 kernel is the only solution.
For the record, USB UPS support depends on availability of the USB_HIDDEV driver, where HID stands for "human interface device". I'm not at all sure just what a human interface has to do with all this, but both apcupsd and nut require it for such devices. In 9.0, it's compiled into the kernel, but that is only up to 2.4.21, and I'm not sure if 8.2 even uses a 2.4 kernel by default. SuSE may have backported the driver binding issue resolution, but I wouldn't count on it. Someone from SuSE may be able to shed some light on this.
All things considered, unless that beast has a RS-232 port on it, I think you have a lot of work in front of you to get it working with your system. First grep /boot/config-<kernel-version> for USB_HID and if you don't find that, you require a complete kernel upgrade. If that is the case, an upgrade to SuSE 9.1 or 9.2 might be easier in the long run (but see the above comment re: 2.6.5+ kernels if you install 9.2 -- I'm not sure which kernel 9.2 does use).
See also:
If you are going to upgrade kernels based on this one thing, I would go with 9.0, not 9.1 or 9.2 9.0 is very related to 8.2 and just uses newer versions of the same basic kernel/software (2.4.24 kernel IIRC). I believe a lot of people believe the 9.0 release was one of the more stable SUSE releases. 9.1 is very different because of the 2.6.5 kernel and seems like a very strange thing to upgrade to now that 9.2 is out with the more tested 2.6.8 kernel. Neither 9.1 or 9.2 seem as stable to me, and there are definately more things to learn with these distros than with a simple upgrade to 9.0. Me: Impatiently awaiting 9.3 with 2.6.11?? - Am I the first to say it. :-) I know a couple more months most likely. Greg -- Greg Freemyer