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    Performing automated shutdown during a power failure using a USB-UPS with NUT - XCP-ng 8.2

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    • H
      Hannes_5253 last edited by Hannes_5253

      Hey there,
      I have a very specific question:
      Is there a way to get PowerChute running on a XCP-ng Host? I already found this article from Citrix:
      https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX119910
      and this from APC:
      https://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA159764/

      The problem is I don't have a Network Management Card installed or the possibility of adding one. I'm dependent on a USB Connection. So I was wondering how I can configure a shutdown of all VMs and the Host with a USB Connection? It's important for me to understand the process. Do I need an seperate PC to manage this? Is there a solution with USB passthrough and one VM executes a shutdown script on the Host? I would be thankful on some help/related articles or anything you can give me to figure it out myself.

      I'm running on XCP-ng Version 8.2 an I have a APC Back-UPS 700.

      H 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • H
        Hannes_5253 @Hannes_5253 last edited by Hannes_5253

        I found this post:
        https://voice1.me/automated-shutdown-xenserver-7-x-with-network-ups-tool/

        I just used the Driver type for USB: usbhid-ups

        You can find the correct driver type for your system here:
        https://networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html

        Here is the guide for USB (partly copied from the article):

        IMPORTANT: The way I made is is not recommend! Your pfSense should normally not run on a VM using this method but it still works. It's recommended to use a physical pfSense to perform this setup.

        Requirement:

        • a VM running pfSense
        • all VMs on your XCP-ng host have to run guest gtilities.
        • a USP with USB Connection
        • XCP-ng Center
        1. Connecting the USP to a VM via USB
        • Plug-in the USP via USB into the Server
        • Enable USB-passthrough in the USB Tab of your Host (XCP-ng Center)
        • Shutdown the pfSense, attach the USB device to the pfSense VM in the Properties Tab of the VM
        • Start the VM
        1. Installing NUT
          If you are using pfSense, you can install nut from the Package Manager. Once installed you will be able to access the setup from Services > UPS.
        • Select “Local USB” from the UPS Type and provide a UPS Name.
        • add this to your uspd.conf:
        ACL all 0.0.0.0/0
ACCEPT all
        • add this to your uspd.users:
        [(YOUR USERNAME)]
password = (YOUR PASSWORD)
allowfrom = all
instcmds = ALL

        Attention! The username has to be written with the brackets! ie: [admin]

        • click on save and pfSense should now detect your UPS and give you its information in the UPS Dashboard.
        1. Configure the XCP-ng host as NUT slave (pfSense is master)
        • By default the built in repository does not have the required library, so we need to enable the epel repository before we can install the nut-client
        yum --enablerepo=* install epel-release

yum --enablerepo=* install nut-client.x86_64
        • Now we need to tell NUT that we want it to listen to an existing NUT Server, in other words, we want to be a “client”.
        nano /etc/ups/nut.conf
MODE=netclient
        • Now that NUT knows it will be retrieving information from another network server, we need to tell it what network server to “MONITOR”. You will need to modify only 2 variables in the file /etc/ups/upsmon.conf but take a look around because you can tweak how the NUT Client responds by modifying the settings in this file. For now, lets just tell NUT where to retrieve its information from.
        nano /etc/ups/upsmon.conf
MONITOR (NAME OF YOUR UPS)@(PFSENSE IP) 1 (USERNAME) (PASSWORD) slave
SHUTDOWNCMD "/etc/ups/xen-shutdown.sh"
        • You probably already have a SHUTDOWNCMD in your configuration Just add a comment “#” to the start of the line and add the one provided above. Speaking of the SHUTDOWNCMD, you will notice that we are calling a specific script. This script can be downloaded here.
        cd /etc/ups
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/serrc-techops/NUT-Configuration/master/slave/xen/xen-shutdown.sh
chmod +x xen-shutdown.sh

        !!! I wasn't able to perform the next step because the service started to fail afterwards!!!
        The shutdown still works. I try to figure out a solution and add it here.

        So on a power failure, the NUT Master sends a message to all subscribed NUT Clients, and the NUT Client shuts down based on its configuration. Wonderful Now our Xen Guests can shutdown, and so can our server. But what happens when we power them back up? We need to make sure that NUT starts on our XenServer.

        • To do so create a new file, /etc/systemd/system/nut-monitor.service and add the following to it.
        [Unit]
Description=Network UPS Tools - XenServer Shutdown
After=local-fs.target network.target
 
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/upsmon
PIDFile=/run/nut/upsmon.pid
Type=forking
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

        Now that we have a system startup script in place, lets make sure it runs on start up.

        systemctl enable nut-monitor.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start nut-monitor
        1. Testing shutdown
        • Execute this command in the Shell of your pfSense:
          This will simulate a power cut!!!
        upsmon -c fsd

        If you have any questions ask me below.

        There is one problem: you have to reattach the USB to the VM after every host reboot!

        Peek A 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Peek
          Peek @Hannes_5253 last edited by

          @hannes_5253 Any reason for not prefering to run the NUT server directly on the XCP-NG host ?

          H 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • H
            Hannes_5253 @Peek last edited by

            @peek said in Performing automated shutdown during a power failure using a USB-UPS with NUT - XCP-ng 8.2:

            @hannes_5253 Any reason for not prefering to run the NUT server directly on the XCP-NG host ?

            I didn't got it with the Host, maybe I'm too stupid.

            Peek 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Peek
              Peek @Hannes_5253 last edited by

              I'm using XCP-ng and except for requiring the testing repo, (specifically only for NUT), it's working perfectly. The package name is a bit "non-standard".

              yum --enablerepo=* install nut.x86_64

              The UPS is connected over USB and on a power failure, the hypervisor shuts all the VMs gracefully down with a simple "shutdown -h +0" specified in upsmon.conf.

              H 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • A
                Aimdev @Hannes_5253 last edited by

                @hannes_5253
                This is a failure re getting usb pass through on boot up of VM correctly.
                We use GPS usb devices for time keeping and despite hacking the various files (overridden on upgrades/patches etc) this issue has never been resolved despite comments on this board.

                UPS & GPS support is important for obvious reasons, and needs an educated review into the problem.

                We moved our UPS to a NetBsd server (not a VM, a separate system) and used NUT (added outside the tight xcp-nt regime) to
                provide the essential power loss situation of the hypervisors.

                Same with GPS, hosted on same BSD system.

                H 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • H
                  Hannes_5253 @Peek last edited by

                  @peek Thanks for the answer! I did this. I have to take another look at the configuration.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • H
                    Hannes_5253 @Aimdev last edited by

                    @aimdev thanks for the information!

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • H
                      Hannes_5253 last edited by Hannes_5253

                      @peek said in Performing automated shutdown during a power failure using a USB-UPS with NUT - XCP-ng 8.2:

                      yum --enablerepo=* install nut.x86_64

                      This video solved it for me (altough its in german)
                      YouTube Tut

                      Thread can be closed.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • olivierlambert
                        olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Admin 🧑‍💻 last edited by olivierlambert

                        Would you mind posting exactly the steps you did to make it work? That might be really helpful for the community 🙂 (and maybe pushed to our official doc at some point!)

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • okynnor
                          okynnor last edited by okynnor

                          I was able to make NUT work with XCP-NG. I used and followed the instructions in this post.

                          On issuing the command:

                          [21:56 xenserver1 ups]# ./xen-shutdown.sh

                          All VMs shutdown EXCEPT for the Xen Orchestra. I tried remove and reinstall Xen Tools

                          apt install xe-guest-utilities

                          I'm on Ubuntu 18.04

                          Is there something that should be done with Xen Orchestra? Like I said, all other VMs shutdown quickly and properly. I only have Ubuntu 18.04 and one instance of FreePBX. FreePBX shutdown properly too.

                          Update: it seems that after 5-10 minutes (not sure yet as I haven't timed it), the entire XCP-NG does shutdown but not sure if it was a forced of graceful shutdown on the VM running XO.

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