APCUPSD Plugin discussion

There's an APCUPSD email list that is very good about responding to questions. I suspect that you might get more traction there since it's a dedicated group.

Yeah I thought that might be the best option.. just thought I’d try here first

Has anyone seen an APC UPS fail at the battery level, but not show a bad battery indicator on the LCD of the device?

We had an unusual power outage last night, and it seems like my entire Indigo/HA setup crashed as soon as it went out (hard to tell exactly, since it happened overnight and there are no Indigo logs seemingly as soon as the power went out). So none of my triggers, alerts, etc. functioned, and the Mac fired itself back up on power resumption, which means it didn't go through a controlled shutdown. In troubleshooting, I looked at the APC utility on the Mac, and it's reporting "Online-LowBat". Under the events tab there is a "Replace battery" warning.

None of this is shocking, I think it might be 5-6 years old. But I was surprised that looking at the device itself (on the little LCD display) there are no warnings. It shows a full battery icon, and the "bad battery" symbol (which I found in the manual) isn't lit. It does show an estimated run time of 0 minutes when I cycle through the menus. Other than that, without the utility running there would be no indication of the problem.

I guess I'm going to buy a new battery and change it out, but just figured I'd throw the question out to the forum here before I drop $50 on a new battery, in case anyone has ay insights on the mismatch of data.

Device is a APC XS 1500.

Thanks

This message came through on the APCUPSD Listserv (some of it will seem out of context here). No warranties expressed or implied. The following notice, as far as I know, has nothing to do with the APCUPSD Daemon or with the Indigo plugin-- but rather, the firmware of the UPS itself.

Trev, thank you for the notice.

Please, in the future avoid posting security notifications leading to 3rd parties like the register. While I agree that probably the majority of people get first notice from 3rd parties, always paste the AUTHORITATIVE links involved as well as links for any firmware. If you want to plug The Register, or wherever you got the info from, I'd appreciate you doing that at the END of the links.

I STRONGLY encourage users to apply this patch to ONE UPS and TEST. Please report back. In particular we have had some recent reports of SMC's not working with apcupsd and firmware updates were needed to get them to work. The fixes for modbus will be included in these patches and there may also be some UPSes that have never had firmware updates before with spotty support for apcupsd.

apcupsd does not use TLS or HTTPS to communicate with UPSes so it's not affected by these vulnerabilities. The CGI scripts and other methods of accessing apcupsd that involve using a webserver or other server that offers TLS could be attacked, however.

Embedded device support of HTTPS has always been spotty. There have been multiple security holes found in the past such as KRACK and Heartbleed. It is well known in the industry that embedded device manufacturers re-use code from the major Open Source Software packages (busybox, linux, etc.) and since they distribute their devices with compiled binary firmware it is difficult to casually examine to make sure they are using current versions. Because of this I strongly recommend NOT allowing embedded devices to be exposed to the Internet EVEN IF you are exposing a "secure" port such as https.

Best practice for remote access is to expose either an RDP Gateway port (using the free RD Gateway and RADIUS software from Microsoft if you are Windows shop, and use a MFA service) or a VNC server if you are a Linux shop (I use UltraVNC) to a "bastion" host (restrict incoming VNC to ONE machine in the DMZ and requiring a second login to access machines in the network) or setup a purpose-built VPN server that uses MultiFactor Authentication (openVPN with individual keys distributed, the free Untangle server is easy to use for this) or a Cisco AnyConnect server (such as a Firepower or ASA couple with Cisco DUO setup for multi-factor authentication)

Here are the links:

Cybersecurity notifications | Schneider Electric Global
Security Notification - APC Smart-UPS SMT, SMC, SMX, SCL, SMTL and SRT Series Security and Safety Notice | Schneider Electric
How do I update the firmware of my SRT/SMC/XU/XP/SMX/SMT/SCL/SRC/CHS series Smart-UPS using the Firmware Upgrade Wizard? - APC USA

Ted

I don't suppose there's ever gonna be a Python 3 version of this plugin? I still use it to monitor 3 UPSes and whilst it's not mission critical it is a handy wee tool!

I don't suppose there's ever gonna be a Python 3 version of this plugin? I still use it to monitor 3 UPSes and whilst it's not mission critical it is a handy wee tool!

Probably not unless someone beside me does it. I no longer have an APC UPS to test with.

Probably not unless someone beside me does it. I no longer have an APC UPS to test with.

I'm not sure the plugin is publicly available at the moment. I followed the Google Drive link and didn't have access to view/download the file. I would need to see the code before committing to taking a run at updating it.

Probably not unless someone beside me does it. I no longer have an APC UPS to test with.

I'm not sure the plugin is publicly available at the moment. I followed the Google Drive link and didn't have access to view/download the file. I would need to see the code before committing to taking a run at updating it.

it is probably best to start with durosity’s version, I haven’t touched it in years and suspected the code I have may not even be current.

I can send over a copy if it’s of interest, however I suspect I’m probably the only user of it nowadays, especially considering the project itself seems to be rather dead too! Alas I’ve not really found a suitable alternative for monitoring them.


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I'm on the APCUPSD Listserve and still get messages via that. I don't think there's much going on in the way of development (of the Daemon), but the last time Apple broke compatibility, a fix came along fairly quickly.

I thought that my version was the last one announced here, version 0.5.2. I took the code from Berkinet's distribution and make a bunch of improvements back in 2017 (it was that long ago??? WTH time flies).

If people are using this version from me I'm not against upgrading it for the newer version of Python. It won't happen today or tomorrow (it's my birthday!) but I can start early next week.

I'm on the APCUPSD Listserve and still get messages via that. I don't think there's much going on in the way of development (of the Daemon), but the last time Apple broke compatibility, a fix came along fairly quickly.

I run mine on a wee raspberry pi (which ironically just died!) so I've not tried running it on macOS for quite some time, but the plugin always still seemed to work fine with it!

I've attached a copy of the 0.5.2 version of the plugin which is the latest one I have in case it's of any use to anyone.

Oh wait, the forum won't allow me to upload it. If anyone wants a copy just send me a PM and I'll send a link.

Oh wait, the forum won't allow me to upload it. If anyone wants a copy just send me a PM and I'll send a link.

You have the version that I'm maintaining at GitHub. Have you made any code changes to it since it was released? If so, please submit a pull request so I can get those before I do too much Python 3 conversion.

Oh wait, the forum won't allow me to upload it. If anyone wants a copy just send me a PM and I'll send a link.

You have the version that I'm maintaining at GitHub. Have you made any code changes to it since it was released? If so, please submit a pull request so I can get those before I do too much Python 3 conversion.

Nope all stock