# Uninterruptible power supply not included



## Dru (Dec 10, 2009)

Just curious, how many of you run a UPS for your FreeBSD desktop?

I used to have a habbit of just pulling the plug on Win boxes when they irritated me, and never had any issues with 2k+, so I never even considered buying a UPS for my desktop.

The past few weeks, Ive been running electric heaters and occasionally I turned on too much stuff, and kicked a breaker, the first 3-5 times, it all booted back up, and fsck ran in the background, couple days ago Im just chilling watching a movie, and blink, there goes my power, only this time everything was screwy in my WM, so dropped to single user, and fsck reported changed files. tried booting back, reinstalling some ports, but no luck, I just had to reinstall completely.

It probably could have been fixed, but I still have a fair amount to learn, and the time to fix would have been longer than just making it clean, plus a few things from the freebsd-update I didnt like anyhow. Being my only pc here, I needed it working.

Anyhow, I was just wondering. Im a little overly paranoid now, till I get the issue resolved, ACPI suspend seems to be working in this new 8.0 install, whereas it didnt in 7.2, the other morning I woke up, and seen the led's on my monitors were orange, instead of blue(powered up), and I made a freaked out dash for the mouse, to see if it came to life, much to my relief it did.

Side note: I dunno if the suspend is tied into the FreeBSD screensaver or not, I didnt use to run it before, but then realized I was just wasting resources, when I was using xscreensaver to simply blank my screen. Kinda off topic, but I didnt mean to imply that it was actually broken in 7.2.

Thanks


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## graudeejs (Dec 10, 2009)

I use UPS for about 3-4 months now.... I got sicj with all the power flickering... and reboots in middle of compilation etc....

Now I use zfs and all this power issue doesn't scare me at all... but I was very angry when power flickered and my UPS managed to keep PC up and runing, the only thing that was wrong is that PC hanged... I had to do hard reset [this have happened only once out of many times, when UPS saved me from rebooting]

I love my UPS... it saves me lots of rebooting.... especially during autumn.

I bet I wouldn't compile all OOO packages without it


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## Dru (Dec 10, 2009)

killasmurf86, nice to know about the UPS, thats also interesting you mentioned ZFS, I'll admit I dont know a lot about the inner workings of file systems, to me as long as they work without problems, I dont get too picky.

On the other hand, while doing some searching, I came across info where it appeared to me that ZFS handled power outs..etc better. I was really contemplating on trying to set up ZFS, but from reading posts around here, I dont think my hardware would be up to it, and maybe a bit complicated for me.

Think I found a decent priced APC unit.


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## graudeejs (Dec 10, 2009)

Some times [about once in 2 months] I do zpool scrub.... just te see that my HDD aren't starting to fail.... and even with all these power problems.... I haven't lost even a single bit of my data on zfs [unless i did `$ rm -R *` by accident]


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## trev (Dec 10, 2009)

Dru said:
			
		

> Just curious, how many of you run a UPS for your FreeBSD desktop?



I've been running UPSes on all my systems and network infrastructure since the Sydney bushfires at the end of 2002. There were frequent brown outs caused by the hi-tension transmission lines passing over bushfire areas overheating and shutting down.


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## Beastie (Dec 10, 2009)

A UPS can be quite useful when you have unstable current and a dozen random power outages every day. It can save your machine, data and sanity.


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## TechieBob (Dec 10, 2009)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> I use UPS for about 3-4 months now.... I got sicj with all the power flickering... and reboots in middle of compilation etc....
> 
> Now I use zfs and all this power issue doesn't scare me at all... but I was very angry when power flickered and my UPS managed to keep PC up and runing, the only thing that was wrong is that PC hanged... I had to do hard reset [this have happened only once out of many times, when UPS saved me from rebooting]
> 
> ...




A UPS is definitely an essential piece of equipment, especially if you have unstable power or big factories next door that keep draining power like our neighbors. We used to have all sorts of power trouble. Now our machines run on APC Smart-UPS 1500's. We get 18+ minutes of runtime, power filtering, and AVR boost/drop. We even have our cordless phones plugged into the unit, they don't consume much power so it doesn't really load the UPS. Definitely my favorite piece of hardware in the office.


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## robbak (Dec 10, 2009)

TechieBob said:
			
		

> We even have our cordless phones plugged into the unit, they don't consume much power so it doesn't really load the UPS. Definitely my favorite piece of hardware in the office.


As long as the phones have switchmode power supplies, it's fine. But if they use analog power bricks, they will load the 'modified sine' output of a UPS quite heavily.


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## Blueprint (Dec 10, 2009)

I run my system at home on an APC ups and installed apcupsd from ports. It was pretty simple to configure and it will shut my pc down if my ups runs low on battery.


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## TechieBob (Dec 14, 2009)

Blueprint said:
			
		

> I run my system at home on an APC ups and installed apcupsd from ports. It was pretty simple to configure and it will shut my pc down if my ups runs low on battery.



Which APC UPS do you use? How much run time do you get?


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## expl (Dec 14, 2009)

ZFS should be pretty much immune to power failure corruptions. Had lots of problems with UFS2 sometimes corrupting bunch of files to the point where it would not auto reboot.


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## johnblue (Dec 14, 2009)

TechieBob said:
			
		

> .. especially if you have unstable power ..


Agreed.  Typically people only think that unstable power comes in the form of brown-outs or black-outs, but a UPS also protects your stuff from over-voltages.

The first time that you hear your UPS beep due to an over-voltage, you will get a very nice, satisfied feeling of money well spent.


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## chalbersma (Dec 14, 2009)

*I feel kindof guilty.*

The power around here is rock solid. We literally went 9 months without a power outage and the company told us about the outage 3 weeks before it happened.  I guess it's just the joys of having a reactor in town.


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## DutchDaemon (Dec 14, 2009)

You live in Quahog?


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## Dru (Dec 14, 2009)

Starting to feel like the uncool guy around here, not running ZFS, lol kidding. Will have to study into it some more.

Thanks for the UPS info, still havent bought one yet, little concerned whats going on with apcupsd and 8.0, before I go buying anything, but hate to wait. There is another thread here on the forum where a couple people were having the same issue.

The actual power to the house rarely goes out here, but my house is early 1900's, and needs a complete electrical system rebuild.

lol Dutch.


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## chalbersma (Dec 15, 2009)

DutchDaemon said:
			
		

> You live in Quahog?



lols nah Fulton, MO. College at West-mo.


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## Blueprint (Dec 15, 2009)

TechieBob said:
			
		

> Which APC UPS do you use? How much run time do you get?



I have an APC Smart-UPS 1000VA, its a bit overkill for my home server but I got it cheap off ebay. 

Runtime will depend on the load. I run my server, router/firewall, 5 port switch off it, and its only reading 20% load with 67 min. Although I don't trust the second hand battery lasting that long, so probably more realistically 30-40 min.


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## Graaf_van_Vlaanderen (Dec 18, 2009)

I have an UPS, but I don't use it.
Power interruptions are almost zero where I live.
The only power interruption I remember the last ten years was an 
interruption of 1 second after a 380kV power line collapsed.
Just like in 'industrial' computer world, there is some redundancy on the power grid.


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## Pushrod (Dec 20, 2009)

The number of hardware failures I've had has gone down significantly since I put all of my computers on UPSes.

I have two FreeBSD machines on a single UPS. One runs apcupsd on it, and if it's time to shutdown, it fires a Perl script which tells the other server to shutdown right away as well. I tested it, and it works well.

Just yesterday, I was working on my desktop computer, doing all kinds of tasks at once, and I heard the UPS click on and then back off about a minute later. Normally, that would have been a reboot, and with my luck, a broken piece of hardware as well.


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## Eponasoft (Dec 20, 2009)

Here in Puerto Rico, the power tends to go out pretty frequently in some areas...I've lived in three cities here, and in two of them (Camuy and Isabella), the power went out at least once a week...in the case of Camuy, it was once a day for awhile. Here in Quebradillas, the power does still occasionally go out, but it's uncommon. So really, having a UPS here is a real lifesaver. Unfortunately, our UPS systems have one at a time died, and we've not had the money to replace them...so the only system that is protected from a powerout now is mine, and only because it's a laptop with a damn good battery. Of course, we continue to use the broken UPS units as surge protectors, so at least there's that. We will be able to replace them soon...I hope.

As a general rule though, UPS systems are very good to have *just in case*. Think of it as insurance for your hardware investment. You have insurance on your car, various insurances on your house, maybe even some on you yourself. So doesn't it make sense to have some insurance on your computer hardware too?


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## Dru (Dec 21, 2009)

Well, I got a refurbished APC Back-Ups 500 coming. Just a little unit, I dont plan on running my monitors off of the battery, and Im not concerned about long runtime, just want a smooth power down incase something happens again.

@Eponasoft: How many non Windows machines do you have running? Maybe I or someone here could help you get the parts needed to fix your UPS's, or something of that nature.


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## Eponasoft (Dec 25, 2009)

Dru said:
			
		

> @Eponasoft: How many non Windows machines do you have running? Maybe I or someone here could help you get the parts needed to fix your UPS's, or something of that nature.


Just this one machine runs a non-Windows OS. The UPS units just need new batteries as far as I know, but they're rather cheap units to begin with, and replacing the batteries would probably cost just as much as just replacing the units altogether.


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