a cautionary tale
This morning I woke up to the distant refrain of a beeping UPS. The power was out long enough for the battery to be *almost* completely drained, such that waking up the monitor in order to shut down the computer killed the whole system instantly -- which saved me countless seconds over having to do a proper shutdown. Ahem.
Eventually the power came back on and I didn't have to resort to an illegal kitchen fire to cook breakfast, or alternately, figure out how to generate microwaves by rubbing two sticks together really fast.
Anyhow, the point is that the UPS software didn't shut down the computer. Using my finely honed computer detective skills I discovered the following reasons why the software didn't work.
(1) The PowerKey beta software expired on September 1st
(2) It's an APC UPS which doesn't use PowerKey software
(3) The APC PowerChute software was not installed on the current boot drive
(4) The KeySpan driver software was not installed either
So, to summarize, the expired beta software for the wrong UPS failed to shutdown the computer because the USB serial port driver wasn't installed.
Q.E.D.
Posted by rc at November 07, 2004 01:16 AM