Installing APC Battery Backup Software

OK, this is unrelated to MythTV, but I hope that you do have a battery backup for those times that the power company fails you, as well as to provide steady power to your box. The software enables your machine to go through clean shutdown when the power is off for a configurable amount of time. I have an APC Back-UPS ES 500 (usb connected), so I will go through what it takes to install the APC management software, specifically for this model. Your installation should be the same, as long as your UPS is USB connected. If not, please refer to the References section below, and go to the apcupsd website for documentation.Before you even get started, try

cat /proc/bus/usb/devices

If you can’t find your APC device within the list output by this command, stop and connect it (remember, USB). If it is still not there — sorry, I can’t help you! Once you are confident that the APC device is recognized, install the software:

apt-get install apcupsd

Now, edit the apc configuration file at /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf. Scan through this file, making sure that the these particular settings are like this:

UPSCABLE usb
UPSTYPE usb
DEVICE

(yes, make sure that DEVICE is set to nothing). Now edit /etc/default/apcupsd, and set ISCONFIGURED to yes. Start the apcupsd daemon:

/etc/init.d/apcupsd start

Now type

apcaccess status

and if you get a batch of output telling you information about your UPS, you’re done! At this point, you can either stop, or go to the Apcupsd daemon for controlling APC UPSes site (click on documentation) to further fine tune the behavior of your battery backup. I found the defaults fine for me, so I stopped here.