Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I am installing the Network UPS Tool on my Rocky Linux 8 Button Mash server. Let’s get started!
A Package Exists
In a previous push on my Button Mash server, I talked about getting an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) so ButtonMash could shut itself down in case of a power failure. If memory serves, I also talked about an open source driver called Network UPS Tools (NUT). At the time, I was under the impression it was exclusively available via source code and I would have to compile it to make it work.
I’ve recently suffered no fewer than four power outages since installing the UPS. A couple long ones while everyone in bed would have outlasted the UPS’s endurance had someone not noticed been aware each time to gracefully shut things down manually. I want the process automated.
And so I started the grind. The first thing the installation instructions tell me is to check for a package. Sign me up!
dnf search nut
I got several results, but with such a simple package name, the letters n-u-t turned up many false positives. NUT’s companion packages come with names of the form: ‘nut-*’, so I often filtered with ‘nut-’. My refined searches remained empty.
Installing EPEL and NUT
If the backbone of a distribution is its package manager, repositories would be its ribs. Not every piece of software gets compiled and packaged for every architecture/package manager. I get that. It was a lesson I had to learn last time I played with optimizing MicroCore Linux and why I’m going with Arch if there ever is a next time.
When I learned NUT was widely available in package form, I went looking again on Rocky Linus dnf: still nothing. Debian has a nice package viewer[1], so I looked for something similar for Red Hat distos. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing something before concluding the nonexistence of a package for me. One exists, but I’d need to make an account. However, I found something even better for my purposes.
pkgs.org[2] is a website that lists packages organized by several different major distributions. I was quickly able to find NUT in the CentOS 8 section for the Intel CPU architecture, but not anywhere under Rocky Linux.
A closer look after hours of confusion introduced me to the EPEL repository (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux). Apparently, it’s held in high regard among the Red Hat branch. Many enterprise Linux users consider it almost mandatory to offset the smaller offering by default repositories. I was uneasy about it at first because it showed up for the now depreciated CentOS RHEL downstream, but EPEL is maintained by the Fedora community, which isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future: I’m calling it safe to use.
sudo dnf install epel-release dnf search nut
NUT was then as simple to install as any other program from a repository.
Side Project
Podman pranks again! While testing my Bitwarden login from my laptop, I got myself permanently logged out. I traced the problem back to my Podman container on ButtonMash corrupting during one of those power outages from earlier. I sent a discouraging error off to the search engine and I found my exact issue on the Podman GitHub (see Works Cited) [3]. I wasn’t happy with the explanation, but it was the best one I found: systemd didn’t like an under-privileged user doing things without at least a recent login, so it messed with Vaultwarden’s Podman container. The messed up container had to be forcefully deleted and remade. I also needed to remember to specify https:// when looking for the server via browser. To make sure it doesn’t happen again, I followed a piece of advice found later in the discussion and permitted the login to linger.
Takeaway
I honestly expected this week’s progress to take at least a month. When I first looked into NUT, all I saw was source code ready to download and compile and honestly, I’m having trouble getting excited about mastering the art of compiling other peoples’ code. If there’s a way to install via a compatible repository, I’m all for it.
I am especially thankful for pkgs.org [2]. They helped me reduce my problem to one I’ve at least blindly followed a tutorial for. You typically won’t find the full, non-free version of Chrome on Linux, so when I was setting up Mint for my father, I had to explicitly add a repository.
While NUT may be installed, configuration is not happening this week if I expect to understand my system when I’m done. I blitzed the first expected month of work and only stopped because the next bit is so intimidating. Here’s to a quick understanding within the next month.
Final Question
NUT has proved difficult to locate assistance for, as I haven’t figured out how use their internal system. Do you have any idea where I can find support for when I need it?
Works Cited
[1] Debian, “Packages”Debian, July, 2019,Available: https://packages.debian.org [Accessed: Jan. 10, 2022].
[2] M. Ulianytskyi, “Packages for Linux and Unix”pkgs.org, 2009-2022, Available:https://pkgs.org/ [Accessed: Jan. 10, 2022].
[3] balamuruganravi “rootless podman ERRO[0000] error joining network namespace for container #6800” github.com, Jun 2020. Available:https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/6800 [Accessed: Jan. 10, 2022].