Hardware recommendation: UPS

[Hayl]

I want to get a UPS.

Can anyone recommend one that they have had success with under Linux?

I want to be able to have two machines (1 deb and 1 gentoo) on it if possible.

is it easier to do this with USB or with serial?

[Hayl]

<bump> c'mon - someone here has to be using a ups. :)

[michaelk]

IMO I would get an APC UPS. Their powerechute software works with linux plus you can find other software on the web that also works. The linux software only works with the serial port but you can get a serial cable instead of USB for free (according to the box).

[Hayl]

cool. thanks i will look into that brand then.

[z0mbix]

I'd also recommend a APC. We use them at work and work very well with apcupsd from http://www.apcupsd.com/. The one's we use (SmartUPS 700 & 1000) use a serial cable.

It was very easy to configure and worked fine. I set this up yesterday for the first time, pulled the plug and it shut itself down 3 minutes before the battery was due to die. They are also very reasonably priced.

[Hayl]

i'll have to head down to the computer store this weekend and take a look. i want something cheap since this is just for at home :)

[LinuxRules]

A success story:

I just installed an APC BX1000 with USB interface under RedHat 8.0. Installation and setup was simple using the development version of apcupsd (3.10.5), available from: http://www.apcupsd.com/

As root I downloaded 'apcupsd-3.10.5-1_rh8_usb.src.rpm', built it with 'rpmbuild --rebuild apcupsd-3.10.5-1_rh8_usb.src.rpm', then installed the resulting rpm.

All I had to do was edit the config file (on my system: /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf) to specify the correct USB port (on my system: /dev/usb/hidev0). Then start it up with the command 'apcupsd'. That is all there was to it.

Everything went wonderfully. Testing revealed that it worked just as expected.