I would like a program that will auto shutdown my Linux machine when it detects low power or X amount of minutes remaining on UPS. I don't have NIC's in my UPS's so that's why I am asking... Not even sure it is possible for the Linux machine to detect when it switches to AUX power.
Thanks

Apcupsd may do what you need, depending on what UPS model you have.

http://www.apcupsd.com/

--jeremy

UPS' usually have a serial port which you connect to the (Linux) system. If the UPS fails over to battery power it'll initiate a shut down of the system. What you need is the software which closes down the system after the UPS indicates the power fail. UPS' usually have about 10 minutes autonomy. (They'd keep the system up for ten minutes at least on battery power) The autonomy depends on the UPS capacity and the system's power requirement. You should be able to set a delay before the shutdown to cope with short losses of power.

Hope this helps.

Play Bonny!

Just to add to the above, APC (in some ways the 'gold standard' at least in terms of reputation for small UPSs) have a mass of configuration options.

Yesno; the UPS sends out a message when one of its alarm conditions are met, so the Linux box has just got to listen for the message. The old UPSs that I know have an RS-232 serial link to convey the information to the computer; USB is more modern, but I believe on UPSs that weigh in above the 'two hernia' level, you get a real ethernet port...

So, you need a small utility that listens on the appropriate port for a message an then reacts appropriately. This is where acpupsd comes in. There is also an acpupsd-gui program for tweaking and monitoring which works alongside acpupsd.

Note that with the APC line you can set fixed delays, remaining percentages of power as limits, and you have to be careful with this; it is very easy to think that setting, say, 10% is safe only to find that the time delay gets it to shutdown much earlier.

Also, depending on what this box is doing, think about what is a graceful shutdown. If you have a document open, which may or may not have been modified, what is the graceful action?

I have APC UPS's with out NICS but do have serial. I'm guessing I need to install this service on every machine I have pluged into an APC? I have 8 and 6 APC's Trying to find a serial cable now.