Network UPS Tools

Network UPS Tools (also known as NUT) is an open source web-based application that provides support for various common power devices, including Power Distribution Units, Solar Controllers, as well as Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).

Features at a glance

Key features include several monitoring and control functionality, supports more than 100 different manufacturers (see http://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html for details), support for several thousands models, as well as support for various communication types, such as USB, serial, network (Eaton MGE XML/HTTP and SNMP).

The project comprises of client and server implementations. While the latter offers a single command, the actual daemon that runs in the background, to which clients can connect to, the former includes six different commands, each one for a specific purpose. To see each one’s command-line options, add the ‘--help’ attribute to the end of the respective command.

Getting started with Network UPS Tools

For your convenience, the software is distributed as both pre-built binaries via the main software repositories of several distributions of Linux listed below and a source tarball. This means that the best way to install it on your machine is to open your default package manager application, search for ‘nut’ and install it with a single mouse click. If you use an operating system where Network UPS Tools is not available as a pre-built binary, install it via the source package.

Under the hood and supported operating systems

Network UPS Tools is a true multiplatform application, written entirely in the C programming language and tailored to support numerous GNU/Linux distributions, including Arch Linux, openSUSE, Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Gentoo, Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSe and OpenWrt, various BSD flavors like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeNAS, as well as the Solaris, IRIX, HP/UX, Tru64 Unix, AIX, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Both 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set architectures are supported at this time.

What is new in this release:

• NUT can now be configured to use either OpenSSL or Mozilla NSS for securing client-server connections.
• Many drivers have been updated, including extensive rewrites of the bcmxcp and apcsmart drivers.
• The nutdrv_qx driver is a more flexible successor to the blazer_ser/usb drivers, and now handles the Voltronic protocol.
• The new apcupsd-ups driver is a bridge to Apcupsd NIS servers.
• Tripp Lite has provided extensive compatibility information and testing results for their USB PDC HID models.

What is new in version 2.6.5:

• This version fixes a regression in upssched and introduces support for a few more devices.
• It also contains a new implementation of the mge-shut driver.
• Support for several new devices was added.
• This release also includes a new meta-driver, macosx-ups, which monitors any UPS which integrates with the Mac OS X Power Sources subsystem (Energy Saver control panel).
• The set of monitored variables is limited, but further development is planned.

What is new in version 2.6.2:

• NUT can now monitor power supply units (PSU) in servers, through IPMI, using the new experimental 'nut-ipmipsu' driver.
• A new tool, 'nut-scanner', can be used to discover supported devices, both local and remote.
• It will help to ease the configuration steps, and power infrastructure discovery.
• There are also minor updates to usbhid-ups, bcmxcp, and snmp-ups, along with major improvements to apcsmart.

What is new in version 2.6.1:

• This version definitely fixes the recent USB regression, distributes the Perl module, and adds many new devices, features, and bugfixes. 2.6.0 previously included the complete documentation revamping using AsciiDoc.
• This includes a new Web site, user manual, developer guide, packager guide, and manual pages, available in various formats (single and multiple pages HTML and PDF at the moment).
• Augeas support has been added too, along with many new devices, features, and bugfixes.

What is new in version 2.4.0:

• This release includes preliminary support for Power Distribution Units (PDUs), either natively or through a binding to the Powerman daemon.
• It also includes support for several new devices, and a new "repeater" mode for the dummy-ups driver.
• Support for tcp-wrappers was added to replace NUT's non-standard ACL system.
• NUT also includes a new Python-based client library and GUI.