[arch-general] package: network-ups-tools what happened to it?

[David C. Rankin]

On 12/13/2013 11:57 PM, William D Turner wrote:
> Now here's a coincidence. I've just spent a fair part of the last 2 days trying
> to get NUT working in a new Arch install (2013-12) - it isn't my main system,
> just trying to understand Arch and systemd so I had a bit of difficulty getting
> to grips with them. I did not find a great deal of help (on this specific topic)
> out on the net although there were bits and pieces to be had which finally came
> together.
> The package is in the AUR as network-ups-tools and does supply the systemd
> scripts - I used <yaourt -Sa network-ups-tools> IIRC. The scripts to user are in
> /usr/lib/systemd/system and after configuring NUT correctly, enabled for reboot
> with <systemctl enable nut-server.service> and <systemctl start
> nut-server.service>. The same for nut-monitor.service.
> Don't try to start nut-driver.service. It is started automatically by the server
> when needed - so I understand.
> My UPS is monitored through a serial interface and a problem that did not
> resolve was the ownership of /dev/ttyS0. Udev (or something) insists on creating
> the device owned by root and uucp and I could not get around this. Eventually
> added user ups to the uucp group which solved it rather unsatisfactorily.
> HTH
> 
> Bill

Bill,

  The hotplugging and udev statefile ownership issues are a pain. nut used to
work perfectly on Arch, now I have to kludge it to get it to run. I have built
it from the git repository, so I have the latest. I ran into the same ownership
problems of the files in /var/state/ups that prevented upsd from starting.
(perms were root:root, needed root:nut). In order to get nut to start, I just
cheated, I just changed /var/state/ups to be setuid/setgid (ok setgid was all
that was needed) So with nut stopped, you can do:

  # chmod 2770 /var/state/ups

  That will force the pid files and the device interface ownership that will
allow upsd to start. I am using the usb (usbhid) driver, so I had to modify the
nut-driver.service before the server would start. For some reason on Arch,
"upsdrvctl start" fails to find the usb device and crashes. Changing the
Execstart to "/usr/sbin/upsdrvctl -u root start <myups_name>" allows it to find
the usb device just fine. With /var/state/ups setgid, the nut-server.service
starts perfectly. So I was finally able to enable it in systemd to start on boot.

  I don't know whether the problem with not finding the driver and
/var/state/ups file ownership is with Arch or nut. The problem popped up a while
back and I'm just getting time to chase it down. I'll let you know what I get
back from the nut-devel list.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.