NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.

Forum Discussion

Bruce_In_Philly's avatar
Oct 14, 2023

Error Communicating with UPS via NAS - Two NASs, one UPS

Summary:  One NAS is connected to the UPS, the other NAS signals the other NAS for UPS status and sends error messages every other day or so...this appears to be a NAS-to-NAS issue, not a UPS issue.

 

Two Ready NAS 104 units - Both NASs on latest 6.10.8

Name: Storage-0  192.168.50.59

Name: Storage-1  192.168.50.86 (error emails coming from this NAS)

APC XS 1500 UPS

UPS is plugged directly into USB port on Storage-0 and shows a correct connection to the UPS

Storage-1 is configured in System/Power/UPS to connect to "UPS 192.168.50.59" which is the other NAS

Both NASs are plugged via Ethernet into the same Ethernet switch.

 

I am getting emails from Storage-1 denoting "Error communicating with UPS "UPS"()"  and then another within seconds denoting "Communication with UPS 'UPS' () is OK."

Frequency email pair is every 1 to 2 to 3 days.  Logs are getting filled up with these messages.

I get no emails from Storage-0 that is connected directly to the UPS.

 

Appears that maybe a timeout should be increased a bit?  I am not sure how this works, how may times what unit pings the other etc...    I compared the logs of both NASs and there appears to be no correlation... no events going on at the same time.  I do get an occasional message from Storage-0 that UPS is on battery and then line power with just seconds between them... happens maybe once a months but again, no correlation to emails from Storage-1.  I have NASs spin down after 120 minutes... Storage-1 is infrequently used... for a few hours once, maybe twice a week.

 

Ideas?

 

Peace

Bruce

 

 

 

2 Replies


  • Bruce_In_Philly wrote:

     

    UPS is plugged directly into USB port on Storage-0 and shows a correct connection to the UPS

    Storage-1 is configured in System/Power/UPS to connect to "UPS 192.168.50.59" which is the other NAS

    Both NASs are plugged via Ethernet into the same Ethernet switch.

     

    I am getting emails from Storage-1 denoting "Error communicating with UPS "UPS"()"  and then another within seconds denoting "Communication with UPS 'UPS' () is OK."

    Frequency email pair is every 1 to 2 to 3 days.  Logs are getting filled up with these messages.

    I get no emails from Storage-0 that is connected directly to the UPS.

     

    Appears that maybe a timeout should be increased a bit?  

     

    Ideas?

     


    Sandshark got these messages a while back on one of his setups - not sure if he ever sorted out what was happening or not.

     

    I've also seen these errors, but if I remember correctly it was with a USB-connected CyberPower UPS, so maybe not the same.

     

     

    There are a couple of parameters that you could set in upsmon.conf (in \etc\nut)

    Not sure when or if the readynas firmware overwrites this file.  Generally I keep both the original and my mod handy, so I can re-apply the fix easily (in this case, I'd create \etc\nut\upsmon.conf.orig and \etc\nut\upsmon.conf.mod, and also keep a copy of both somewhere else, in case I needed a factory default later on).  

     

    If it rewrites it every time the NAS is booted, you could try setting file permissions to prevent that.

     

     

    Looking through the doc, I don't think changing the polling parameters will help.  Changing 

     

    NOTIFYFLAG COMMOK   EXEC
    NOTIFYFLAG COMMBAD  EXEC

     

    to

     

    NOTIFYFLAG COMMOK   IGNORE
    NOTIFYFLAG COMMBAD  IGNORE

     

    should suppress the messages (not something I've ever tried, but what I'd do first). 

     

     

    It looks like it is possible to do something more elaborate with the NUT CMDSCRIPT capability if you were so inclined.  Chapter 7 in the NUT manual has more info on this.

     

    One thought on debugging this stuff safely - 

     

    You do want to make sure that any mods don't interfere with the shutdown when power is lost.

     

    Moving the NAS power so it isn't connected to the UPS power (but leaving the monitoring paths ok) might be useful.  Connect a different load to the UPS (something that will drain the battery reasonably quickly without damaging anything).  Then you can make sure that the shutdown still happens cleanly, without risking an unclean shutdown when the battery drains.

     

    • Bruce_In_Philly's avatar
      Bruce_In_Philly
      Aspirant

      Thanx... I will look into this...  maybe a bit over my pay grade, but I will dig in...  First thing to do is run a test to ensure the NAS will shut down per the UPS run down...   I did this a while ago and all was good, but will try again.

       

      Peace

      Bruce in Philly

NETGEAR Academy

Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology! 

Join Us!

ProSupport for Business

Comprehensive support plans for maximum network uptime and business peace of mind.

 

Learn More