Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I am adding an uninterruptible power supply to ButtonMash instead of actually finishing the Bitwarden job because SSL certificates are very confusing to research. Let’s get started!
Computers 101
Here is the first lesson in computer literacy: power in, stuff happens. But unlike simple light bulbs, computers are essentially endlessly shifting labyrinths of electronic circuits. Complex patterns of information flash back and forth at near light speed both within any given computer. Networked computers form even more complex circuits. Everything is timed on the scale of nanoseconds or tighter. Power a local node off suddenly, and these patterns can be interrupted. That is why it’s important to use proper shutdown procedures.
But power outages are almost always a surprise. Planned maintenance or safety shutoffs can happen, but more often than not, the power company is just as surprised as its customers left in the dark. Backup systems are about as varied as their applications. I’ve heard of an old diesel locomotive engine rigged to jump start power generation for an entire college campus. Combustion-powered generators are popular at many scales. The hardware I’m dealing with today is an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) from CyberPower.
First Impressions
This particular unit is essentially a battery with an inverter and some electronics to monitor everything. Going off just the box and literature it shipped with, it can power a little network device for several hours or a gaming console and TV for half an hour. Just don’t go trying to vacuum with it or run a space heater off it.
The unit has a USB-B connector in back, but little more is said about it than it carries data. I had to do a bunch of background research online to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that my particular model here could communicate a power outage so the system can gracefully shut down. Otherwise, it’s useless for long and unattended outages.
I did not find the CyberPower website helpful. The Linux driver section kept listing RHEL/CentOS 7 and ButtonMash is running a RHEL 8 compatible system. By the time I got around to seeking personal assistance finding the right driver, we had lost the receipt and didn’t know the exact date of purchase, which was the only field labeled required by the help form.
I borrowed a phone and called in. After explaining my situation, retrospect has me believe I was shepherded into the part of the help script pointing me past the one spot where the RHEL driver included version 8, and by then I had forgotten I was still wondering if my specific model could actually use the driver. Assuming it could, it wasn’t clear if the driver could hook into Cockpit or if it would want an open port all to itself.
Open Source Driver: NUT
CyberPower’s official support may be official, but it left a bad impression. When I saw that the driver needed root privileges, I decided to research an open source driver. Not many appear to exist. I reached out to my usual Linux community support channel, but it was quiet all day. I eventually landed on a mention of Network UPS Tools (NUT).
Unfortunately, my research here is incomplete. My impression is that they’ve been around for a while and that I will need to familiarize myself with some less beginner-friendly Linux rituals to operate effectively there. NUT appears to be exclusively distributed as source code signed with GPG. I haven’t mastered either skill. Furthermore, even if I do get the driver working, my specific model isn’t on their known working list. In any case, I will need to reach out to this specific community at some point if I want to see it working.
Side Project
My sister is into a game called Stardew Valley. It recently had a slightly clunky update that broke her modded setup through something known as SMAPI. My father and I took turns working on it. I opted to try a clean install on the virtual machine I’m trying to set up for her, but I ran into a problem when the virtual drive filled up its physical space without dynamically expanding. I had made a copy of the whole VM, so I was able to delete the troubled clone. In the future, I should take snapshots to restore.
Meanwhile, my father worked on the original Windows install. Together, we traced the problem to the wrong specific version the dotnet 5 framework being used when I took the shasum of the install file and compared it against the files available for download. We later identified the problem as a failure to communicate on the part of the download page. The three Windows versions looked like they could be one download each for Windows, Linux, and Mac where the correct version was located in the “column” below the Linux tab’s heading.
Takeaway
It’s safe to say I’m well beyond beginner-friendly Linux territory now. I start doing sysadmin level stunts, I best expect to subside on sysadmin grade assistance. For now, I’m happy knowing ButtonMash can survive a brief power blink and that I have a while to manually shut it down if I notice an outage as it starts.
Final Question
Has quality of help ever chased you away from a particular product?