Ubuntu Manpage: socomec_jbus - Driver for Socomec JBUS UPS with RS-232 serial Modbus connection.

NAME

       socomec_jbus - Driver for Socomec JBUS UPS with RS-232 serial Modbus connection.

SYNOPSIS

       socomec_jbus -h

       socomec_jbus -a DEVICE_NAME [OPTIONS]

           Note
           This man page only documents the hardware-specific features of the socomec_jbus
           driver. For information about the core driver, see nutupsdrv(8).

SUPPORTED HARDWARE

       This driver supports Socomec JBUS series, online (double conversion) UPS with the
       following characteristics.

        1. Single phase and 3-phase UPS

        2. Connection: RS-232

       These are typically provided with a Netvision WEB/SNMP management card / external box that
       would be better served by the snmp-ups(8) driver. In case netvision isn’t available, you
       can hook up the UPS directly via the serial port and use this driver.

       Currently, it has only been tested on the following model.

       •   DIGYS 3/3 15kVA

       In theory, any Socomec JBUS model should work. It should be discovered as “Unknown Socomec
       JBUS” with a numeric id that I’ll need to add it to the list of supported UPSs.

       Sadly, Socomec document only mentions DELPHYS MX and DELPHYS MX elite and I have the id of
       my own DIGYS, so chances are, your model will not be recognized but will probably mostly
       work. Please report successful or unsuccessful results to the bug tracker or the mailing
       list. Make sure to include the full model number of your UPS manually in your report.

       socomec_jbus uses the libmodbus project, for Modbus implementation.

CABLING

       The UPS has an RS-232 port which should be connected with a NULL-modem cable to a PC
       serial port. The UPS tested has a female DB9 connector, so if you construct the cable
       yourself, make note of the connector type to avoid using gender changers.

       RS-232 is supported on all operating systems, either via a built-in serial port on your
       computer, or by using an external USB-to-RS-232 converter. If you plan to use an
       USB-to-RS-232 converter, make sure it’s supported by your operating system.

INSTALLATION

       This driver should be built by default if libmodbus and development headers are available.
       You can force the configure script to build it with the following arguments:

           configure --with-serial=yes --with-modbus=yes

       You also need to give proper (R/W) permissions on the local serial device file to allow
       the NUT driver run-time user to access it. This may need additional setup for start-up
       scripting, udev or upower rules, to apply the rights on every boot — especially if your
       device nodes are tracked by a virtual filesystem.

       For example, a USB-to-serial converter can be identified as /dev/ttyACM0 or /dev/ttyUSB0
       on Linux, or /dev/ttyU0 on FreeBSD (note the capital "U"). A built-in serial port can be
       identified as /dev/ttyS0 on Linux or one of /dev/cua* names on FreeBSD.

INSTANT COMMANDS

       This driver does not (yet?) support sending commands to the UPS.

VARIABLES

       This driver does not support writable runtime variables (see upsrw(8)): for the same
       reasons. Both should be trivial to implement, but since I’ve already found one or two
       inconsistencies in the documentation, I’m withholding from trying them.

KNOWN ISSUES AND BUGS

Well, it is an alpha release at best, but so far appears to report the UPS status
reliably. Mostly based on the work of Yifeng Li <tomli@tomli.me> on the huawei-ups2000 in
that very same source tree.

Read failure on some JBUS addresses
The driver polls all documented JBUS addresses and it is quite possible that your UPS
model does not support one of them (e.g. the Digys does not support address 0x1020 which
should provide the current UPS status). This should be logged with LOG_ERR from
modbus_read_input_registers() along with the address that produced the error.

Data stale
Under certain circumstances, some registers can return invalid values and trigger a "data
stale" error. Once a data stale error has occurred, you should see error messages similar
to the example below in the system log.

socomec_jbus: modbus_read_input_registers(addr:XXXX, count:Z):
Illegal data address
upsd: Data for UPS [socomec] is stale - check driver
upsd: UPS [socomec] data is no longer stale

So far all known problems have been fixed by the author, but an unknown one cannot be
ruled out. If you have encountered "data stale" problems during normal uses, please file a
bug report with full logs attached.

Before troubleshooting or reporting a problem, it’s important to check your dmesg log for
USB connect and disconnect events to avoid wasting time on the NUT driver when the actual
problem is USB. For example, if someone yanks the cable out of the USB port, or if a new
USB device is plugged into a USB host/hub that is struggling to power its ports (common on
single-board computers like Raspberry Pi), or if you have flaky cabling or EMI noise, the
serial converter can get disconnected from USB, at least briefly. This creates a permanent
data stale, the driver must be restarted (plugging the USB back won’t fix it, since the
driver is still using the nonexistent serial device). These USB problems usually have
nothing to do with NUT. If it’s the case, you should solve the underlying USB problem -
check the cable, check the converter, try a powered USB hub, try a full-speed USB
isolator, etc.

AUTHOR

       Thanos Chatziathanassiou <tchatzi@arx.net>