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UPS for Linux

I’m tired of the electric shortages I am suffering these days at home (where this blog an other services I use frequently are hosted) so I decided to buy an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for my server. Without doing too much investigation I bought a unit from Belkin: FH6350efUNV.

I’m really surprised with the Quality-Price ratio offered by this product. For less than 60€ I have an unit that properly notifies events (on battery event, on line power event, on low battery event, etc), mails me when each of this events get fired and monitors UPS status in real time. And all of this compatible with my Gentoo Linux.

Programs for Linux that come with the product are binaries without source code. I found troubles with some of them (I was unable to send customized mails) so I started looking for a open source solution. And here I faced NUT.

Network UPS Tools is a collection of programs for monitoring and administering UPS hardware under Linux using a client/server architecture. After hours investigating (Belkin FH6350efUNV unit is not officially supported by the last version 2.0.1) I discovered the driver that worked perfectly with my hardware: Powermust Driver. Powermust reports all the information (with the exception of the temperature variable) I had with the propietary software distributed by Belkin. All the notification system works perfectly with this driver.

So, if you are looking for a cheap and effective UPS unit for your linux, I really recommend buying one of the Belkin F6H series.