"Communications with UPS lost" every time I connect my UPS with a USB cable


PIMF

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Hi, fellow unRAIDers!

 

A few days ago I wanted to implement some cable management, so after safely shutting down my unRAID tower I disconnected its power plug from my UPS (APC Back-UPS 700VA) and then disconnected all my USB devices, including the UPS's USB cable. After organizing the cables and putting everything back together, I booted up unRAID and everything was working properly, including all other USB devices - however I got an alert saying "UPS Alert - Warning communications lost with UPS".

 

I have tried fully powering down the tower, rebooting it normally, using different USB ports, using different cables, turning the UPS daemon on and off repeatedly, turning the UPS itself off and on - all to no avail. The UPS doesn't seem to appear in the device list, however I noticed that every time I connected the UPS's USB cable, I would get the following line in my syslog:

Sep 25 02:58:05 Tower apcupsd[6383]: Communications with UPS lost.

Disconnecting the cable gives no log entry, but connecting it does - this seems to imply that the system recognizes that the device is supposed to be a UPS, even though it doesn't appear in the device list? Very odd behaviour.

 

I'm pretty much out of ideas now, and having the UPS work properly is really important. I would be very grateful for a point in the right direction.

tower-diagnostics-20170925-0307.zip

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You might want to read through this:

 

    http://www.apcupsd.com/manual

 

A couple of things that were not real clear in your initial post.  First, did it work before you started your cable management?  Second, you really need a better identifier than " APC Back-UPS 700VA" as this covers many models of APC UPS's made over the past ten years or so.  Model numbers usually are something like 'BR700G'.  Then Google your model number and the problem to see if you find the solution that way. 

 

EDIT:  It appears that you do not have a load on the UPS at this time.  Put a load on it the battery powered outlets and see if that makes a difference.

Edited by Frank1940
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2 hours ago, PIMF said:

Hi, fellow unRAIDers!

 

A few days ago I wanted to implement some cable management, so after safely shutting down my unRAID tower I disconnected its power plug from my UPS (APC Back-UPS 700VA) and then disconnected all my USB devices, including the UPS's USB cable. After organizing the cables and putting everything back together, I booted up unRAID and everything was working properly, including all other USB devices - however I got an alert saying "UPS Alert - Warning communications lost with UPS".

 

I have tried fully powering down the tower, rebooting it normally, using different USB ports, using different cables, turning the UPS daemon on and off repeatedly, turning the UPS itself off and on - all to no avail. The UPS doesn't seem to appear in the device list, however I noticed that every time I connected the UPS's USB cable, I would get the following line in my syslog:


Sep 25 02:58:05 Tower apcupsd[6383]: Communications with UPS lost.

Disconnecting the cable gives no log entry, but connecting it does - this seems to imply that the system recognizes that the device is supposed to be a UPS, even though it doesn't appear in the device list? Very odd behaviour.

 

I'm pretty much out of ideas now, and having the UPS work properly is really important. I would be very grateful for a point in the right direction.

tower-diagnostics-20170925-0307.zip

 

Looks like you have both NUT installed and apcupsd enabled.  Do you have NUT enabled as well?  Pick one, both cannot be enabled.  There are checks to not allow both to run at same time, but does not mean those checks are 100% reliable.  Which program were you using before?

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9 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

You might want to read through this:

 

    http://www.apcupsd.com/manual

 

A couple of things that were not real clear in your initial post.  First, did it work before you started your cable management?  Second, you really need a better identifier than " APC Back-UPS 700VA" as this covers many models of APC UPS's made over the past ten years or so.  Model numbers usually are something like 'BR700G'.  Then Google your model number and the problem to see if you find the solution that way. 

 

EDIT:  It appears that you do not have a load on the UPS at this time.  Put a load on it the battery powered outlets and see if that makes a difference.

Yes, everything worked excellently before my cable management. It's only disconnecting and reconnecting that seems to have caused this. The UPS model is BX700U-FR. I googled looking for a solution with any UPS and couldn't find much, let alone with this specific model number.

 

What do you mean by "load" here? My tower and an external hard drive are connected to the UPS and get their power through it. Should I disconnect the UPC from the wall and force my stuff to work off the battery?

 

8 hours ago, unevent said:

 

Looks like you have both NUT installed and apcupsd enabled.  Do you have NUT enabled as well?  Pick one, both cannot be enabled.  There are checks to not allow both to run at same time, but does not mean those checks are 100% reliable.  Which program were you using before?

I only installed NUT after the problem appeared to see if it would recognize my UPS, but it didn't work. I was using unRAID's built-in UPS capabilities, so apcupsd.

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I looked at your diagnostics file and found that you are running an old version of unRAID which also means that you do not have the most recent version of apcupsd.  (I checked your version against the one installed on my Media server.)  This could be the problem but I tend to doubt that.  Do you have another UPS that you could try and see if it stays connected?

 

I did not wade through your list of plugins to see what other plugins you have installed.  Are you using any other USB ports for anything but the UPS and your flash drive?  Are you using a UBS2 port rather than a UBS3 port-- USB2 have a black plastic inset and USB3 have a blue plastic insert.  (USB2 ports generally have fewer issues and your UPS certainly does not need the extra speed for the UPS communication link!)

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4 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

I looked at your diagnostics file and found that you are running an old version of unRAID which also means that you do not have the most recent version of apcupsd.  (I checked your version against the one installed on my Media server.)  This could be the problem but I tend to doubt that.  Do you have another UPS that you could try and see if it stays connected?

 

I did not wade through your list of plugins to see what other plugins you have installed.  Are you using any other USB ports for anything but the UPS and your flash drive?  Are you using a UBS2 port rather than a UBS3 port-- USB2 have a black plastic inset and USB3 have a blue plastic insert.  (USB2 ports generally have fewer issues and your UPS certainly does not need the extra speed for the UPS communication link!)

I tried updating unRAID through the plugins tab but it tries to update from a dead link:

plugin: updating: unRAIDServer.plg
plugin: downloading: https://s3.amazonaws.com/dnld.lime-technology.com/stable/unRAIDServer-6.2-x86_64.zip ... failed (Invalid URL / Server error response)
plugin: wget: https://s3.amazonaws.com/dnld.lime-technology.com/stable/unRAIDServer-6.2-x86_64.zip download failure (Invalid URL / Server error response)

Other than the UPS and flash drive, I have one external hard drive connected to a USB3 port. I've tried the UPS in my other ports, both USB2 and USB3. When the daemon is on, I get this message every 10 mins regardless of whether it's connected or not:

Sep 25 19:58:17 Tower apcupsd[6383]: Communications with UPS lost.
Sep 25 20:08:18 Tower apcupsd[6383]: Communications with UPS lost.
Sep 25 20:18:18 Tower apcupsd[6383]: Communications with UPS lost.

I guess it was just a coincidence that it appeared when I connected my UPS after all :(

 

I'll try removing the UPS battery and reconnecting it, maybe that might work. Also updating unRAID couldn't hurt, is there a way to feed it the 6.3 url to update from there?

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37 minutes ago, bombz said:

May I add to this topic?

I have recently just hooked up a CyberPower UPS (stand alone) to my array (no USB attached). 

 

The device I am using:

CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS System, 1500VA/900W, 12 Outlets, AVR, Mini-Tower

 

What is the process to having any config or allowing UnRaid to detect this UPS from the GUI

 

Thank you!

 

This is not related to the topic you posted in, so you should really start your own thread for this.

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6 hours ago, PIMF said:

Also updating unRAID couldn't hurt, is there a way to feed it the 6.3 url to update from there?

See here:

         https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/57599-unraid-os-version-635-stable-release-available/

 

The instructions will get you  to the latest stable version which has the latest version of apcupsd.

 

For the beta series,  see here:

 

     https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/57820-limetech-release-process-how-do-i-install-prereleases/https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/57820-limetech-release-process-how-do-i-install-prereleases/

 

6 hours ago, PIMF said:

Other than the UPS and flash drive, I have one external hard drive connected to a USB3 port. I've tried the UPS in my other ports, both USB2 and USB3. When the daemon is on, I get

this message every 10 mins regardless of whether it's connected or not:

 

How or what plugin are you using to connect this drive?  (The reason is that I have a Yubikey--  a two factor identification device---  plugged into a USB2 port on the front of my desktop.  EVERY time, I plug in a flash drive, it gets disconnected.  I know it will happen and I now have a work-around---  A USB3 extension cable from one of the rear USB ports on the MB.)

 

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With NUT not installed and the USB cable to the UPS connected to the server and apcupsd enabled as usb, usb, do you get status of the UPS in the GUI?  Is everything working, but you get these communication lost messages?  This change in cable management, how is the USB cable to the UPS ran now versus what it was before?  Is it bundled with other cables like power?

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Thank you everyone for your suggestions. In the end I managed to get it to work with the good old adage of "turn it off and on again". Only this time instead of shutting the UPS off and on, or resetting it, I manually cut power from the battery to kill it entirely, then reconnected it. A hard reset like this fixed the issue.

 

2 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

The instructions will get you  to the latest stable version which has the latest version of apcupsd.

 

Thank you for these instructions, was finally able to get it to update.

 

2 hours ago, unevent said:

With NUT not installed and the USB cable to the UPS connected to the server and apcupsd enabled as usb, usb, do you get status of the UPS in the GUI?  Is everything working, but you get these communication lost messages?  This change in cable management, how is the USB cable to the UPS ran now versus what it was before?  Is it bundled with other cables like power?

 

No UPS status, unRAID did not recognize it at all - as if it was unplugged. Cables were exactly the same, at most I might have connected it to a different USB port. Full hard reset with breaking power from the battery was the only thing to fix it.

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