MGE UPS in slave mode

Hello,

I'm currently evaluating NAS-R3 in demonstration mode :

Model: NAS-R3
Version: 4.10.NE00000000.2584
Release date: 2007-02-20

The problem is that the NAS ups daemon in slave mode didn't communicate with the ups daemon on the master (Linux Debian with "nut" package).
The UPS status on the nas is still :

Info
Status: Not available

PS : I know that the settings on the master are ok because i've got several others computers linked to it with success.

Also, i didn't understand why i must specify the UPS model (PULSAR ES etc...) and the port (com1, 2 etc...) when i configure the NAS to use MGE UPS in slave mode.
Cause it is not required by upsd in monitor mode... so is it just ignored ?
Could you give any clue ?

Thanks.

Hi Mathieu,

I was hoping from the email that you sent to support concerning this particular subject, would be best tested with the NAS-R3 Ent. and this would work and resolve some of the issues you have with our UPS Support for MGE. I remember contacting MGE here in the USA about this case back in October of last year and they instructed us to use the Pulsar SX or ES models with setting com1, 2... been so long details have escaped me - Profuse apologies :( . I have thought this over and our engineers have discussed this internally and we have collectively tried to understand why this is just not working. My thought could be a wrong type of cable (we had a case similar to this but it was related to APC, when customer contacted APC they stated to use different cable - then it worked).

From what you have in your configuration looks set up correctly, so this is really puzzling to us as we have so many customers utilizing this function.

Let's try one more time to see if we can help get this working. Send an email to support asking “”please :)))) allow me to enable Remote Support”” to investigate the NAS-R3 Ent. (please set gateway, DNS and outbound tcp port 65500 and test that you can access the internet) on correctly setting up the MGE M/S configuration. Please allow them plenty of time to run test.
Send this next week to start.

Mathieu we know you have been frustrated with this issue, please allow us another chance to assist you and somehow resolve this. Also thank you for downloading the NAS-R3 Enterprise Demo-CD for Testing and Evaluation for your environment, as this is important to make decisions before investing.

Thanks again Mathieu!

Hi Todd,

Quote:

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Also thank you for downloading the NAS-R3 Enterprise Demo-CD for Testing and Evaluation for your environment, as this is important to make decisions before investing.

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Of course, i had a phone call from your support team (27, April 2007) and i am already waiting for a new NAS-R3 Ent. dongle to solve the problems i have with XSR, that's why i am here :).

Anyway, i still can't connect, but i think i've found where the problem is.

Configuration :

Master - Debian : (UPS monitoring OK)
Nut 2.0.4 (Network Ups Tools upsd)
Connected to the MGE PULSAR 2200 RT ups with a serial cable

Slave 1 - Windows : (UPS monitoring OK)
Username : nas
Password : nasuser
UPS name : PULSAR2200

Slave 2 - NAS-R3 : (UPS monitoring NOK)
Username : nas
Password : nasuser
UPS name : The UI do not allow me to specifiy this essential information

Diagnostic :
As you can see, i can't specify in the configuration page of NAS-R3, what is the name of the UPC to connect to. This parameter is essential because my Master could be connected to several UPS's and it is used to distinguished the UPS's.
So by default, NAS-R3 connects arbitrarily to an UPS named : "ups".
I know that because i used "Wireshark" (Ethereal) tool to sniff the network from the master computer, and i can see in the TCP packets the following commands :

USERNAME nas
PASSWORD nasuser
LOGIN ups
LOGOUT

So to be sure, i've changed the name of my UPS from "PULSAR2200" to "ups", to allow NAS-R3 to connect to the master, and be sure NAS-R3 understand my UPS.
Finally, when the name of my UPS is "ups" on my master, i see NAS-R3 slave in the captured TCP frames connecting successfully to the master.

But, when i have a look at the UPS status page, (STATUS>Hardware) i still see "Status: Not available".
To help you debug, i've found in the captured TCP frames that, to retrieve the NAS status, NAS-R3 sends the command :

GET VAR ups ups.status

And i see my master answering :

VAR ups ups.status "OL CHRG"

Answer which means that the UPS i on-line even if charging the batteries, but this answer seems no to be understood by NAS-R3.

Conclusion :
I see 2 problems here, the first one is in the UI :

- In slave mode, we must have the possibility to specify the UPS name to connect to
- In slave mode, the "UPS model, "Port" and "Timeout" parameters are useless

The second one is in the UPS status interpretation :

- Even if NAS-R3 connects to an UPS slave successfully, the status page do not display informations

I stopped my testing here waiting for your clues.
Please, tell me if you have the same results on your side... and if so if it can be corrected.
Maybe you should tell me which NUT package version the NAS-R3 ups tool was validated with.

PS : I will send this diagnostic by mail to the support as you suggested.

Thanks.
---
Mathieu

Great job on the research. Also I saw the email to support but did not see where you had asked if you can enable remote support to help assist you or if they can run tests.

Thanks again for the huge effort on sending this information to our engineers.

Sorry, i just didn't understood what do you mean by "remote support" in your previous post.

The problem is that i must know what sort of testing will be made because the UPS is actually in production and have 2 critical servers connected (One is the NAS-XSR ;) ), and they mustn't be shutdown at all.

I can make almost all the testing you want, but providing a link to my test machine is not a really simple task because i must put it in the DMZ before and i need some more time to accomplish this.
Of course, if you can't reproduce this in your lab, i'll do it as soon as possible.

I understand - ok let's wait and see what the software engineers suggest.