Configuring UPS to Cycle Power During Non-Work Hours

In work environments where energy savings is crucial, you can use your UPS to cycle power on and off according to a specified schedule. You can set this up with two commands: Instruct cron to implement the power_onoff command, unattended, as part of a routine schedule. Consult the cron(1M) and >power_onoff(1M) manpages for information on using this feature.

The following procedure causes the system to shut down at 5:30pm and start up at 7:30am each weekday. Saturday and Sunday, the system remains powered off.

Create a crontab file containing the following entries. The first entry applies to Monday through Thursday and the second entry applies to Friday.
30 17 * * 1-4 power_onoff 7:30 tomorrow 30 17 * * 5 power_onoff 7:30 Monday
This tells cron to execute power_onoff at 5:30pm Monday through Friday. power_onoff executes shutdown -h 60 immediately. The arguments to power_onoff tell ups_mond when to cycle power back on.
You can specify an increment to power_onoff of up to four days (99.9 hours) in advance.

Once running, ups_mond logs status messages using syslogd, the system logging daemon. You can configure syslogd to redirect these messages where appropriate. Refer to the syslogd(1M) manpage for details.

For example, you can add these lines to /etc/syslog.conf:

# Log/report messages from the ups_mond
 
daemon.info     /usr/adm/daemon_log
daemon.err      /usr/adm/daemon_log
daemon.emerg    /dev/console
daemon.emerg    hostname
 
# Log messages from power_onoff
 
user.err        /usr/adm/user_log

Once these lines are added to /etc/syslog.conf, syslogd must be set to accept the changes. Execute kill -HUP `cat /etc/syslog.pid` and restart ups_mond.

Verify that HP-UX has been properly configured for the PowerTrust UPS as follows:
- Check to make sure the UPS monitor daemon, ups_mond is running, by executing ps -ef | grep ups. This process is started at bootup by /etc/inittab and can be manually started by executing /usr/lbin/ups_mond -f /etc/ups_conf.
- Make sure that the UPS messages are displayed on the console.
- Check for UPS messages in /usr/adm/syslog or the files to which they are redirected.

Although the PowerTrust UPS is hardware, it displays in ioscan output only as a terminal port. Its monitoring daemon, ups_mond, is a program that reads and writes through that port.

Configuring UPS to Cycle Power During Non-Work Hours

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