• WinNutUpsMon Documentation
• by Andrew Delpha delpha@computer.org
• Network UPS Tools maintained by Arnaud Quette, of MGE UPS SYSTEMS.
• Many thanks to Russell Kroll, the original author and maintainer, for
• his excellent work and years of dedication to the project
• Windows WinNutUPSMon monitor ported and maintained by
• Andrew Delpha delpha@computer.org
• see CREDITS file in the nut package for more details
• Released under the GNU GPL - see COPYING for details.
• Program support page: http://random.networkupstools.org/

•        WinNUT at: http://csociety.ecn.purdue.edu/~delpha/winnut/
  

DESCRIPTION

This is a windows port of the upsmon client provided with the Network UPS Tools package. It provides a background application/service to monitor a ups, display the desired notifications, and shutdown the windows computer if necessary.

FILES INCLUDED IN BINARY PACKAGE (after installation)

alertPopup.exe - This takes a message provided on the command line and displays it in a modal popup window. WinNutConfigurationTool.exe - This utility configures the location of key files as well as other options. It also allows you to start and stop WinNutUpsMon WinNutUpsMon.exe - This is the actual monitor utility. See instructions below for how to start the monitor. upsmon.conf - The configuration file (with windows specific comments, but same format as the unix version) QuickStart.txt - Quick guide to installing the WinNut Ups Monitor ReadMe.txt - This file ChangeLog.txt - List of changes between versions COPYING - copy GNU General Public License

INSTALLATION:

1. You must have a nut ups daemon (v1.4.x and greater supported) running on a another system (windows version is currently the monitor client only) that's monitoring the desired ups.

2. Run the WinNutConfigurationTool.exe NOTE: NT/2000 users: you need to be logged in as an administrative user A) WinNut Executable Path should be the full path to WinNutUpsMon.exe B) Configuration file path should be the full path to the upsmon.conf (you will edit this file in step 3) C) Log File path should be the full path to where you want the log file created D) Select which log channels you wish to log Checking Debug creates a VERY large file over time, but selecting everything but debug is very reasonable. E) Select the appropriate options for the NT service / automatic startup as you desire. F) Select your default UPSD port (can be overridden per MONITOR line in the upsmon.conf file) NOTE: All versions of nut since Version 0.50.0 use 3493 by default, earlier versions used 3305. Your server may have been setup with a different port. You can override this value in the upsmon.conf file per server being monitored. G) Timed Shutdown - If enabled, WinNUTUpsMon will shut the system down after the ups is on battery for the specified number of seconds. If the battery reaches the critical point before this time is up, WinNUTUpsMon shuts the machine down immediately**. WARNING - don't set this too small, or UPS self tests may cause it to shutdown when you don't really want it to. Note that there is a 5 second window around the number of seconds specified where the shutdown may start due to when polls of the server relative to when the power failed.

   **=Note as of release 0.45.2b, I've ported over the new NUT upsmon feature of waiting up to HOSTSYNC (specified in upsmon.conf) seconds for the master UPS to send out the FSD (force shut down command) and then shuts down.
   If this time expires, WinNUT gives up and shuts down anyway. This helps alieviate race conditions where the slave systems shutdown as power is restored and the master doesn't shutdown. H) Shutdown Method - This is a very important setting. I would recommend Forced unless you have problems.

   • Normal - This is a normal shutdown, where applications get a chance to prompt the user to save a changed document, etc. Things like active desktop don't like the forced shutdown. See Normal footnote below for more details.

   • Forced - Using this shutdown method, applications don't get a chance to ask the user to save their work. (Note, all shutdown methods have a warning dialog with a count down that is displayed for x seconds where x is specified with the FINALDELAY directive in the conf file.

   • Force If Hung - (Only available in 2000 and later) - it is presently the same as forced. NOTE: I haven't had reports of problems under NT / 2000 with the forced shutdowns. I use a different shutdown call under NT / 2000 that only has forced and normal modes (it provides the countdown dialog).

     Normal footnote - This can cause a machine that is not manned at the time of the power failure to not shut down properly. Also, if an application gets hung, it will prevent proper shutdown. There is another problem that a user can cancel the shutdown by hitting the cancel button on one of the save dialogs. When this happens WinNut will remain running (but won't try to shutdown the computer again), so that the Master upsmon process won't shut off the ups power until this computer shuts down (at which point we notify it we're powering off) or it gives up on us and powers down anyway (this case also runs the risk of the master not getting a good shutdown if it's timeout waiting for us is too long).
     Some programs (most notably ActiveDesktop) don't like forced shutdowns. Active Desktop will come back up in recovery mode if it the machine is shutdown with the Forced option. I've also heard of some computers that require a 3rd party app to power off the machine, and it gets killed with the force option and doesn't power off the machine - I'm guessing it would need the normal shutdown to work. Anyway, I definately recommend forced with Windows NT/2000, and try forced with windows 9x, and if you have trouble then switch to normal.

3. Edit the upsmon.conf to A) Setup the ups the machine is monitoring (see the MONITOR section) B) By default the notify command is set to "c:\Program Files\WinNUT\alertPopup.exe" Fill in the path to the notify command in the NOTIFYCMD section if this is not where you installed WinNUT Note: This should work with any program that will take a message as a double quoted command line arg. The alertPopup.exe is provide for this purpose as noted in the example. NOTE: You must escape backslashes in paths in the configuration file ie: c:\bin\WinNUT needs to be in the config file as c:\bin\WinNUT NOTE: surround file names double quotes if they contain spaces C) Any other settings as you see appropriate - note that some settings are ignored in the windows world.

4. Start up the daemon -> The Configuration tool can stop and start WinNUT in both service and application mode (it starts it in whatever mode your current configuration indicates). OR -> Use the program icons installed under Start->Programs->WinNUT OR -> Run at the run prompt or command line, or setup a shortcut link to "WinNutUpsMon.exe -c start" OR -> Under win9x and NT/2000 (when not configured as service) you can start WinNUT simply by double clicking WinNutUpsMon.exe. OR -> Under NT/2000 (configured to run as a service): If it is in automatic mode, it will automatically start after your next reboot. To start it now, you can use the manual start instructions: If you opted to start it manually, do the following Select Start->Run Type (without quotes) "net start WinNutUpsMon" and press enter or use the GUI services manager from the control panel.

5. Shutting down the daemon: -> Launch the Configuration tool and press the stop button OR -> Use the program icons installed under Start->Programs->WinNUT OR -> Run at the run prompt or command line, or setup a shortcut link to "WinNutUpsMon.exe -c stop" OR -> If under NT/2000 it is running as a service Select Start->Run Type (without quotes) "net stop WinNutUpsMon" and press enter or use the GUI services manager from the control panel.

OTHER NOTES:

-> Under Windows 9x, the WinNUTUpsMon will not show up as a running process when you press as it is registered as a background process so it doesn't get killed when a user logs out. Under NT/2000, if WinNUT is run in application mode, it will get killed when the user who started it logs out (I don't think there's any way around this under NT). Use the service version if you want it to run all the time.

There are several configuration variables that WinNUT ignores.
The following are ignored SHUTDOWNCMD POWERDOWNFLAG

Using net send If you would like to use net send to send messages under NT/2000: I would suggest using a batch file as the command and placing the net send command in it, as I don't think the current launch command can deal with passing the parameters. Note: the net command is a console command, so for every message it sends, it will briefly popup a command window on the screen that may take focus away from the current app - I haven't found any way around this (if you know, please tell me).

UNINSTALLING:

Use the uninstaller in the Start->Programs->WinNUT menu OR Use the Add/Remove programs tool under the control panel

The upsmon.conf will be left in the program folder in case you are uninstalling for an upgrade

If for any reason this should fail, here's the old info on manual removal

Launch the configuration tool ->Stop WinNut

• Under Windows 9x/ME -> uncheck the automatic startup box
• Under Windows NT/2000/XP(whistler) -> uncheck the run as service Note the path to the log file, config file, and the executables Close the configuration tool

Using regedit remove \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WinNUT and all it's subkeys

If you are under windows NT/2000 Use regedit to remove the following key \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application\WinNutUPSMon NOTE: Removing this key will cause the application event logger to not recognize WinNUT events in the application log. I've not seen this cause any real problems thus far though.

Delete the WinNUT program directory (if you unzipped the WinNUT stuff in a directory by itself) Delete the logfile and config file (if they were not in the WinNUT directory) This should remove all traces of WinNUT from your system