Tripp-lite PowerAlert RPM - can't convert with Alien

[jlbrewer]

We got a big Tripp-Lite SmartOnline UPS in a while ago. Turns out the official Linux support for it is only in Fedora and OpenSUSE. I tried converting the .rpm packages of their management software and ran into the following problems:

error: cannot open Packages database in /home/jamie/.rpmdb

Tried creating the folder and got:

error: cannot open Packages database in /home/jamie/.rpmdb
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - No such file or directory (2)

So no go. It's 64-bit Ubuntu 10.10 and the RPMs are 32-bit. (And I have no idea if the PowerAlert tools will run sans GUI on the servers it will be powering anyway.)

Anyone know what's wrong with Alien? I downloaded it from apt and as far as I can tell all the dependencies are in place.

Anyone have experience getting PowerAlert to run on Ubuntu? I called their tech support and got the company line, no help there.

I will try nut next, but I'm pesimistic - it had driver issues with the smaller Cyberpower UPSes that the workstations are running on (but Cyberpower at least has working .deb binaries!).

[jlbrewer]

one-week bump.

[JPorter]

I'd love to know this as well...

[DavidAGG]

Here's how I got this working:

Download the Fedora RPM.
Convert it to a gzipped tarball with alien --to-tgz pal-app-12.04.0053-1.i386-fedora.rpm
Unzip it: tar -zxvf pal-12.04.0053.tgz
Copy files across: cp -rpf var/* /var
cp etc/init.d/pald /etc/init.d

The pald init file does not work since it is looking for Redhat/Fedora init functions. I modified it thus:

#!/bin/bash
prog=pald

start() {
    echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
    start-stop-daemon --start --exec /var/tripplite/poweralert/engine/$prog --pidfile /var/run/${prog}.pid --make-pidfile
    RETVAL=$?
    echo
    [ "$RETVAL" = 0 ]
}

stop() {
    echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
    start-stop-daemon --stop --name $prog 
    RETVAL=$?
    echo
    [ "$RETVAL" = 0 ] && rm -f /var/run/${prog}.pid
}

restart() {
    stop
    start
}

# See how we are called.
case "$1" in
    start)
        start ;;

    stop)
        stop ;;

    restart)
        restart ;;

    *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
        exit 1
esac

exit $RETVAL

I created a symlink to the init file: ln -s /etc/init.d/pald /etc/rc5.d/S80pald

The GUI monitoring software is in /var/tripplite/poweralert/console/pal_console.sh. You will need a relatively recent Java JRE. It seems to be working as expected so far. The only oddity is that the PID stored in /var/run/pald.pid does not match that returned by ps. I assume this is because the daemon forks itself into the background twice so it can release its controlling TTY and/or make itself a session group leader (an old daemon trick).

[HDave]

Here's how I got this working:

Download the Fedora RPM.
Convert it to a gzipped tarball with alien --to-tgz pal-app-12.04.0053-1.i386-fedora.rpm
Unzip it: tar -zxvf pal-12.04.0053.tgz
Copy files across: cp -rpf var/* /var
cp etc/init.d/pald /etc/init.d

The pald init file does not work since it is looking for Redhat/Fedora init functions. I modified it thus:

#!/bin/bash
prog=pald

start() {
    echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
    start-stop-daemon --start --exec /var/tripplite/poweralert/engine/$prog --pidfile /var/run/${prog}.pid --make-pidfile
    RETVAL=$?
    echo
    [ "$RETVAL" = 0 ]
}

stop() {
    echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
    start-stop-daemon --stop --name $prog 
    RETVAL=$?
    echo
    [ "$RETVAL" = 0 ] && rm -f /var/run/${prog}.pid
}

restart() {
    stop
    start
}

# See how we are called.
case "$1" in
    start)
        start ;;

    stop)
        stop ;;

    restart)
        restart ;;

    *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
        exit 1
esac

exit $RETVAL

I created a symlink to the init file: ln -s /etc/init.d/pald /etc/rc5.d/S80pald

The GUI monitoring software is in /var/tripplite/poweralert/console/pal_console.sh. You will need a relatively recent Java JRE. It seems to be working as expected so far. The only oddity is that the PID stored in /var/run/pald.pid does not match that returned by ps. I assume this is because the daemon forks itself into the background twice so it can release its controlling TTY and/or make itself a session group leader (an old daemon trick).

This isn't working for me. My x64 Ubuntu server 12.04 will not run the pald executable.... presumably because it is a 32bit exec on a 64bit system. Installing ia32libs seemed way overkill. Any suggestions?

Edit: I punted on there stuff and went with nut along with the tripplite_usb driver which is working great.

[wildmanne39]

Thanks for sharing,please do not post in threads that have not had activity for a year or longer, since this is an old thread it has been closed.