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APC AP9584 Serial to USB adapter with a Smart-UPS.

2012/02/02 By Leave a Comment

So, I ended up with a SU1400 Smart-UPS as a castoff from campus network services, and alas, it only has a serial (RS-232) port, not USB, and I’m attaching it to a Mac. So, I went online, and found out that lo, APC makes something to address that (only officially, it only works with the Back-UPS models). $37 later, I had the adapter, and plugged it in. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Neither Mac nor PC would see the adapter was there. I figured it was dead, and prepared to RMA. But, on a whim, I decided to try putting a smart-signaling cable between it, and the UPS. Viola! My Mac instantly saw there was a UPS there. So, the adapter must be getting power from the serial side, and not the USB side. Weird.

Anyway, thought I should share that piece of knowledge. So, not only do you need the adapter (AP9584), but you need a APC Smart Signaling cable (2 meters 940-0024, or 15 feet 940-1524). Or, just make your own following the info on the apcupsd site.

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Temperature monitoring an iMac

2012/01/17 By

When work moved to it’s temporary home during construction, we were forced to move one of our labs to the campus library, into a room that was, not exactly lab-worthy. It’s totally enclosed, and poorly air conditioned. During fall term, the students and faculty that were in that space complained about the heat, and we worked with the library to help address it.

But, new term, and new students/faculty bring new complaints. Problem is, we didn’t really have a good grasp on the temperature in there. So, today I set about fixing that.

There are really 3 things needed to get this working.

  1. Copy of tempmonitor (found here, in /Volumes/Temperature\ Monitor\ 4.94/TemperatureMonitor.app/Contents/MacOS/)
  2. snmpd.conf (will show REAL basic one below)
  3. Script to grab temp, and report it

Really, all of this is pretty darn simple. So, here we go.

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“Server” is a concept, part 2: Redundancy

2011/11/01 By

A while back, I wrote about the announcement of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), and how people were freaking out about it being dumbed down with regards to the Server OS (or the possibility that there would be no Server version). Today (and yesterday), a rumor has been going around that Apple is thinking about killing the Mac Pro, and how everyone is freaked out that there’s no alternative for “pro”. Which then brought out the FUDtards again to talk about how sad they are that the Xserve was killed, and how the Mini Server isn’t a real server, etc. Which brings us to part 2 of my “Server is a concept, not hardware or software”. Or more specifically, “Redundancy shouldn’t be only at the system level”.

I won’t rehash what I’ve already said, but I will touch a bit on the hardware argument since it came up. Someone brought up that the Mini Server should have (for redundancy/resiliency):

  • Dual power
  • Dual Thunderbolt
  • ECC RAM

I won’t argue too much with the ECC RAM, since it would be a relatively easy thing to do (though ECC RAM can’t correct for BIG errors, so it’s not really the amazing thing people say it is, plus it tends to be slower), but the other two, I will argue a bit with, and they both are basically the same argument.
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