UPSSCHED(8)

NAME

upssched - Timer helper for scheduling events from upsmon

SYNOPSIS

upssched [OPTIONS] [NOTIFYMSG]

Note	upssched should be run from upsmon(8) via the NOTIFYCMD. You should never run it directly during normal operations.

upssched -l

List currently tracked timer events, if any. Report as a TAB-separated table of: NAME, TIMEOUT_ABS, TIMEOUT_REL, NOTIFYTYPE, UPSNAME, NOTIFYMSG.

DESCRIPTION

upssched was created to allow users to execute programs at times relative to events being monitored by upsmon(8). The original purpose was to allow for a shutdown to occur after some fixed period on battery, but there are other uses that are possible.

COMMON OPTIONS

-h: Show the command-line help message.
-V: Show NUT version banner. More details may be available if you also export NUT_DEBUG_LEVEL=1 or greater verbosity level.
-D: Raise the debugging level. Use this option multiple times for more details.

OPTIONS

By default upssched processes its configuration file and executes or queues calls to its CMDSCRIPT, or cancels some previously queued item(s), based on configuration and the NOTIFYTYPE it receives. One exception to this is the queue listing mode -l.

-l: List pending timers (if any) and exit.
NOTIFYMSG: Optionally pass a text message (typically originates from upsmon(8) call to upssched as its NOTIFYCMD) as an environment variable named NOTIFYMSG to the CMDSCRIPT launched by upssched immediately or after a timer expires.

INTEGRATION

upssched needs to be called as the NOTIFYCMD in your upsmon.conf(5). It determines what is happening based on the UPSNAME and NOTIFYTYPE environment variables. You should never have to deal with them directly.

Set the EXEC flag on the events that you want to see in upssched. For example, to make sure that upssched hears about ONLINE, ONBATT and LOWBATT events, the flags would look like this:

NOTIFYFLAG ONLINE EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG ONBATT EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG LOWBATT EXEC

If you also want to continue writing to the syslog, just add it in:

NOTIFYFLAG ONLINE SYSLOG+EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG ONBATT SYSLOG+EXEC
NOTIFYFLAG LOWBATT SYSLOG+EXEC

For a full list of notify flags, see the upsmon(8) documentation.

Please note that command execution is synchronous (with the called upssched tool process in case of EXECUTE directive, or with the timer process). Consider using your system shell abilities like & to send long-duration handling to the background and let upssched timer daemon continue. This should not impact upsmon daemon, which handles each notification in a separate sub-process (and so not a problem for immediate EXECUTE events).

CONFIGURATION

See upssched.conf(5) for information on configuring this program.

EARLY SHUTDOWNS

To shut down the system early, define a timer that starts due to an ONBATT condition. When it triggers, make your CMDSCRIPT call your shutdown routine. It should finish by calling upsmon -c fsd so that upsmon gets to shut down the slaves in a controlled manner.

Be sure you cancel the timer if power returns (ONLINE).

EARLY PREPARATION FOR A SHUTDOWN ON UPSMON PRIMARY INSTANCE

The upsmon(8) primary instance is responsible for telling the UPS(es) to power off at the end of emergency shutdown. As such, if there are several clients, the primary instance raises an "FSD" (Forced Shut Down) flag on the data server for each UPS it manages, and waits for secondary instances to log off (or for a timeout to expire). If there are activities that should happen on the primary upsmon’s computer during shutdown which take a long time, you can use the FSD notification to begin those operations while the primary upsmon instance waits for the secondaries to complete their shutdowns.

If you have several UPSes, you may want to combine several notifications with the START-TIMER-SHARED directive (with a short timeout), so you only react once. Alternately, if the needed activity varies by the UPS (e.g. custom remote-device shutdown scripts), you may actually want to use EXECUTE rules right away (and dispatch further work in your CMDSCRIPT).

DEBOUNCING EVENTS

If your UPS goes on and off battery frequently, you can use this program to reduce the number of pager messages that are sent out. Rather than sending pages directly from upsmon(8), use a short timer here. If the timer triggers with the UPS still on battery, then send the page. If the power returns before then, the timer can be cancelled and no page is necessary.

BACKGROUND

This program was written primarily to fulfill the requests of users for the early shutdown scenario. The "outboard" design of the program (relative to upsmon) was intended to reduce the load on the average system. Most people don’t have the requirement of shutting down after N seconds on battery, since the usual OB+LB testing is sufficient.

This program was created separately so those people don’t have to spend CPU time and RAM on something that will never be used in their environments.

The design of the timer handler is also geared towards minimizing impact. It will come and go from the process list as necessary. When a new timer is started, a process will be forked to actually watch the clock and eventually start the CMDSCRIPT. When a timer triggers, it is removed from the queue. Cancelling a timer will also remove it from the queue. When no timers are present in the queue, the background process exits.

This means that you will only see upssched running when one of two things is happening:

There’s a timer of some sort currently running
upsmon just called it, and you managed to catch the brief instance

The final optimization handles the possibility of trying to cancel a timer when there are none running. If the timer daemon isn’t running, there are no timers to cancel, and furthermore there is no need to start a clock-watcher. So, it skips that step and exits sooner.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

NUT_DEBUG_LEVEL sets default debug verbosity if no -D arguments were provided on command line, but does not request that the daemon runs in foreground mode.

Note	Unlike some other NUT daemons, `upssched` with enabled debug does not stop reporting on `stderr`! It forks a background process with the first call as an event handler, which exits soon after all tracked timers have elapsed and were handled (if needed).

UPSNAME and NOTIFYTYPE are required, as detailed above. They are set by upsmon when it calls upssched as its choice of NOTIFYCMD.

NUT_CONFPATH is the path name of the directory that contains upssched.conf and other configuration files. If this variable is not set, upssched uses a built-in default, which is often /usr/local/ups/etc.

FILES

upssched.conf(5)