Hi, does anyone know of a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) that can signal it's status (battery charging, discharging, AC Power % of power left, etc) to Linux?

Why I need to know:
The hard drive that had my SuSe Install on it died, taking the only known copy of my 300 point research paper on Chernobyl for my English class (and my MP3 collection, and ISOs of Doom 3 and Quake 4) with it. So this never happens again, I'm researching parts to build a low-cost RAID 1 (or RAID 5) file server for my family and I to share over our home network. POwer in my area will often go out during thunderstorms or ice storms and I want the server to be able to shut itself down safely in the event of a power outage/blink.

I have an APC UPS 1400 and I run apcupsd (3.10.18) on my Linux box. It's not a 'smart' UPS so I just have it set to count down for 600 seconds. If the power comes on before then nothing happens, but once it gets to 600 it shuts down properly.

apcupsd can work with smart UPS units, I just couldn't afford one at the time. I've had this one since 1999 and only replaced one battery. Usually I test it once every 3 months to make sure the 600 seconds is no problem - so far it's been great.

Thanks for the tip! Will this work for other APC UPSs? I'm in the USA and I'm pretty sure the 1400 won't work on the American 120-volt power system.

*writes sticky note "BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP", staples to forehead*

Yep - I got the 1400 because at the time I had a couple of boxes connected to it - apcupsd isn't the only software available but it does work with a bunch of different APC hardware. The docs at http://www.apcupsd.org/ are pretty good and the list of supported APC units and cables is at http://www.apcupsd.org/manual/Suppor...es_Cables.html.

Hope that helps...

Yeah... it looks like it will.

I'm going to have to shop for a Unit later... probably around 8:30PM GMT... The Final draft of said English paper is due the 9th and I'm basically starting from scratch.

The paper is coming well, and I found that we had an APC Back UPS 500 in our basement. The Docs say it will work with linux!

Thanks Steve!

I found out that we had an APC Back UPS 500 in our basement... the Link you posted says it will work.

Thanks Steve!