powerd(8)
NAME
powerd - UPS monitoring daemon
SYNOPSIS
/sbin/powerd [tty]
DESCRIPTION
powerd monitors the serial port connected to an UPS device
and will perform an unattended shutdown of the system if
the UPS is on battery longer than a specified number of
minutes. powerd needs to watch a tty with modem control
properties. Please refer to the powerd documentation for
further information.
powerd also has the capabilities of notifying other
clients on the network that may have a UPS but not be con
nected to the serial line that there is a power outage,
and id configured through the powerd.conf file
CONFIGURATION FILE
Here is the configuration format:
Lines beginning with '#' are ignored.
- MODE <mode>
- specifies the mode the UPS should be in. Valid
arguements are MONITOR and PEER MONITOR being the mode to actually watch a UPS serial port, and PEER
being to listen for a connection from a machine in
MONITOR mode - MONITOR <device>
- Specifies which device to monitor while in MONITOR
mode. Specify an actual device file. Example:
/dev/ttyS0 - POWERFAIL <line> <high|low>
- Specifies which lines on the serial ports indicate
that the power is out. Valid arguements are DCD,
CAR, CTS, and RNG. Also specify if the line being
HIGH or LOW indicates a power failure.
Since most people may not know this arguement,
Please use the enclosed upsdetect program to auto matically find this line. - NOTIFY <hostname[:port]> <password>
- Specified in MONITOR mode to notify a client run
ning in PEER mode. Specify the hostname of the
machine, and optional port the daemon is running
on, And the password as specified by their LISTEN command. See below for more details. - LISTEN <hostname> <password>
- Specified in PEER mode, specifies a hostname that
is allowed to notify us of when the power is out,
and the password they shall give us to authenticate
themselves. The 2 passwords should match on the
MONITOR mode machines NOTIFY password, and the PEER
modes LISTEN password. - LISTENPORT <port>
- Specified in PEER mode, specifies the port that
powerd should listen on. If you use this argue
ment, powerd shall not default to using port 532,
and the machine in MONITOR mode must specify the
port you use in their NOTIFY command. - DELAY <delayinseconds>
- Specifies how many seconds before notifying init of
a power outage. Note that this doesnt mean that the
system will shut down in that many seconds, as it
depends on how init is configured. Init usually
issues a 2 min shutdown. - USER <username>
- Specifies which username to drop to from root. The
program will reobtain root access only when it
needs to, Like when notifying init that the power
is out. This is simply a security feature, and not
needed for powerd to operate. Note: powerd must
still be run initially as root. It will then drop
to the user if, and only if, a username is speci
fied.
ARGUMENTS
None: Please use the configuration file /etc/powerd.conf
which can be generated with detectups. See detectups(8)
for more information
FILES
- /etc/powerd.conf powerd configuration file
/etc/powerstatus indicates line power status
/etc/inittab init is what actually issues the - shutdown
SEE ALSO
powerd(8), shutdown(8), wall(1), init(8), inittab(5).
AUTHOR
- James Brents <James@nistix.com> (with parts of this man
page borrowed from all over the Linux community)