[PLUG] UPS Advice needed

[chris (fool) mccraw]

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:34, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
> And, as someone else noted, I
> need to keep my router, switch and modem running too.

hate to be pedantic, but if the area is without power for an extended
time, does that mean that the internet infrastructure won't be
running?  guess it depends what you have and how they are setup.
dunno about you, but my computer gets a lot less interesting without
an internet connection.  not useless, but i wouldn't be using it
instead of reading by candlelight without a connection, frinstance.

> After reading the several responses I have concluded that the advice
> that I really need is what UPS will work with a laptop and a desktop
> that run only Ubuntu. Even when I had the old APC running I was using
> Windows and I never connected any cables to the computer or installed
> software to shut the computer down. So I know nothing about how that
> part works.

to be frank, i'm not certain that your usage pattern even calls for
graceful-shutdown-software.  if you're planning to be using the thing,
you can watch the battery level.  if you're not around, you still want
it to run for 12 hours?  the software might be an added pain without
substantial added gain.  see below for an example of pain.

we have a honking APC ups here at the office, like, fridge-sized, and
the free software that exists for linux (apcupsd) is pretty flaky.  so
much so that i have it running, but not doing anything except logging.
 because it logs transient connection-to-the-ups failures constantly,
which would normally shut the machine running the software down.  so
instead i monitor *that* software for an outage longer than 5 minutes
and do some automated sshing around shutting things down.  total
kludge, but i gave up on apcupsd after a day or so trying to get it to
work right.  so i can't recommend the APC free software.  maybe others
have had better luck with it.  the commercial "powerchute" stuff
seemed to work better last time i used it.  dunno if it's available
for linux or if it comes free with consumer-level ups's though.