I have what appears to be a CyberPower ups (it's actually a Geek Squad branded UPS from BestBuy). I've installed NUT and it looks like upsd has loaded with genericups type 7 driver. Through this driver I've learned that the UPS is a CyberPower Power99 UPS. I've run upsc and it tells me the hardware and that the ups in online (plugged in). When I unplug the UPS from the wall outlet upsc says the UPS is offline. So this means the driver is communicating with the UPS right? Well, that's the only information I'm getting from the UPS because when I run KNutMonitor I get a little green light, some generic info about the UPS, but nothing specific or useful in terms of UPS load, battery capacity, etc. In other words, the UPS is communicating in dumb mode.

I should say at this point that the UPS is connected through a serial cable (ttyS01). The UPS came with a serial to USB adapter but upsd won't communicate with the UPS with this thing plugged into the USB port and the UPS.

So my question is, how do I extract some of the useful info out of the UPS? Is this a driver issue (do I even have the right driver? It appears to be the only one that works, so I guess it's the right one) or a cable issue, or worse, a UPS issue?

Thanks.

My guess would be, unfortunately, a UPS issue. Many of the cheaper UPSes do not provide "smart" information to the host computer. I've used one that provided no real information (serial), but my newer (and higher capacity) UPSes all connect via USB and provide a wealth of information.

Hmmm... I see. There is only one more thing. When I use the Windows software on the windows side, there's a little timer when the power goes out that tell you how much battery life is left in the UPS. The linux side doesn't give me that information. Also the windows software does what I would like to do in Linux, and that is to have the PC shut down properly when the power goes out. Is this still a UPS issue that the windows software fixes somehow, or is the Linux software just not communicating with the UPS in the same way? What do you make of this? Thanks for the replies.

I don't know about CyberPower's, but my APCs use a program called apcupsd to accomplish these things. Perhaps apcupsd also supports your cyberpower ups.