mystified

People always say they hate the compiling and while I admit it gets annoying at times Gentoo also makes me think a lot and have to research and I enjoy that. Here's what I've had to do this past week. It started with my UPS and trying to get it working. The linux software from Belkin didn't work so I took the suggestion to try nut. Well after getting it all configured it seemed like it just couldn't find my serial port. So I checked my kernel .config and sure enough when I had compiled my kernel the last time the driver 8250 for serial ports had errors. So I decided to upgrade my kernel and recompile. I used my old config but there were a lot of errors during make so I decided to start with a fresh .config. I am using gentoo-sources. So then I had to think of all the things I needed to compile in. No errors in make, ran lilo and booted. Oops, alsa couldn't find my sound card. Easy to fix, but then I had another error, I don't remember what it was but it was something that needed to be compiled into the kernel so I googled and found out what it was. Now the fun of finding it in make menuconfig. Ok, got that done. Still no serial port connection. This is where the nut developer came in and told me I needed a different driver which wasn't in any linux software yet because my UPS was so new. So working with him for a few days and I was able to get my UPS working. Now, not being satisfied I wanted to be able to access my UPS online via localhost. So I asked the developer and he told me how. I had to emerge nut with the cgi USE flag. But even though the ebuild didn't failed I got an error that it couldn't find libgd. So I emerged gd and it failed to build libgd. So I posted on the Gentoo board and they told me that I needed to build GD. Duh, I already told them that. So I searched the gentoo board and found out that I could put libgd in make.conf as a use flag. So I did that and it worked. Cool! But during all this time I realized I hadn't done my world updates in about a week. I do the deep world updates which not only upgrades packages but there dependencies. I had 66 programs that needed compiled including several kde ones. So I just let it run over night and I had a message that I had 5 config files that needed to be updated and to run etc-update. Well, as any Gentoo user knows you don't run etc-update until you know what it wants to overwrite. An example is when you have a new xorg and it wants to overwrite you xorg.config. So I ran my little script that I have. Looked over what needed to be upgraded and thought I was safe. Then I had to reboot. No kde, just a bunch of errors. So I did startx which takes you into the Gentoo default wm which just consist of a black screen and three terminals. Right clicking on the desktop gives you nothing. So then I had to figure out why it wasn't working. I checked my config files and somewhere along the way they changed the default config files where you set you XSession to kde. So I made sure that was ok. Them I set kdm for login. But .kderc was overwritten. I don't use the modular kde so the easiest thing to do was to emerge kdm and see what packages were blocking it and then reemerge that one. As I suspected it was kde-base. I remerged it and cool. I could now log into kde. Now you ask why do I love Gentoo because off all these problems. Well it's fun! Frustrating but fun. I spent a lot of time looking for answers. And then getting it all worked out was satisfying. So now I have to break something else so I can fix it and hopefully learn more. Yes, I am crazy!

I just did my updates in Debian and one of them was a kernel update. It showed me a progress dialog and then told me to reboot. That was it!

I'd be happy to help out. But I do have the nut developers mailing list and if they're anything like the guy I worked with they should be very helpful.

Well the problem is that my UPS is so new that none of the UPS monitoring programs for linux have drivers which is why I couldn't get it to work. I was using the belkinunv driver which was supposed to be for belkin. Fortunately this guy new Gentoo very well. He had me download files in a manner via clii that I've never even seen before (I use wget) and it downloaded a folder called trunk. Inside were files that had to be compiled together to make a driver. So he had me get my nut tar.gz from /usr/portage/distfiles and move it to home. Then I had to untar it, add those two files to the drivers folder and retar it. The we had to do a user portage_overlay which you may be familiary with, I was, but I'd never had to do one before. So then I moved the nut tar into the new directory I'd created and emerge it. The UPS recognized the drivers and it started working. Except nutmon which is the monitorying device. I kept getting weird error messages in my syslog that didn't make sense so it would shut itself down. He'd never heard of it before but he told me we'd figure it out or he would go to the rest of the nut development team to find an answer. Eventually through trial and error we found out the problem. Restarted upsmon and now it's just working. This morning he sent me a long email with lists of all kinds of things telling me how to use it. He is so nice and he went so much out of his way. I'd never have gotten it to work without him. Trust me!

Well with more hassle and two days of work with a nut developer I am happy to say it is working!

Ok, I had responded to this and my post disappeared! I couldn't find the actual download for that version. I found the Belkin page where it says it's available but not a place to download. I think I remember trying one of them that had an install script and got an error message but I could be wrong. But I'm still working with the NUT developer and we're making progress so I really hope I won't need it. And forget about calling Belkin. I did and they said nobody knows anything about linux! Thanks for the offer ian!

How are you trying to install it? From the cd or easy-urpmi? I'd recommend that you try the easy-urpmi link at the top of the page if you haven't already. It's very easy to set up.

I googled for that and couldn't find an actual download page for it. I do remember trying one with an ./install but ran into an error message. Don't know if its the same.

One of the first things I did was updatedb and try and locate zerog and I get no results.

mystified@localhost ~ $ java -version java version "1.5.0_11" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_11-b03) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_11-b03, mixed mode)

Well hopefully I won't have to worry about it. The nut developer came back with a fix. I don't understand all of it yet so I had to ask some more questions but he told me they would provide support until I get it working. Fingers crossed! Edit: I just saw that last part. I did set up my vm according to the Gentoo doc you linked too. And I really appreciate the offer.

Ok, a nut developer explained to me that there is a problem because my UPS is so new and the driver won't work. So, here's where I'm at with the Bulldog software localhost Linux # sh setup_console.bin Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/zerog/lax/LAX And I switched to Sun. I know this isn't a corrupt download because I copied it all from the install cd. The reason I can't use the install cd is because it has java on it but when I try to run the setup script it says permission denied for the java. I already called Belkin and they told me they had no linux users so they couldn't help me! Any ideas?

I set the $PATH and it worked fine. But then I got another error which I googled and gooled and could fine no solution to. The thing that came up the most was that it was a corrupted download. So I tried downloading it 2 or 3 times and still had no luck. Which is why I just decided to try nut.

I compiled it into my kernel as a module. How else could I do it?

It's not going to matter what I use unless someone on the Gentoo forum comes up with a miracle. I compiled all the support in for my serial port but when I ran a command it showed it had no driver. It should have a driver because it was compiled in but it's not. I've recompiled my kernel twice. The module that needs to be there is there and when I do modprobe it shows no errors. I think I'm going to have to give up on this one.

Yes I've followed those instructions. I am also trying the Bulldog software and get all kinds of java errors. I'm trying to figure out how to fix my java. I've posted on the Gentoo forum.

I already checked my bios. And the setserial command did not work. Still no response.

They have a setserial but not a statserial.

I know what the problem is but not how to fix it. If I do cat /dev/ttyS0 I get no response. It's not being detected.

Thanks, when I use /dev/ttyS0 it can't find the ups. when I try /dev/ttyS1 I get this: tcgetattr(/dev/ttyS1): Input/output error

Yes I am. I'm trying to google and find ports suggested.

auto only works for usb. And unfortunately I can't use usb because I have no drivers. I contacted intel and the only ones they have for linux are suse and redhat. Won't work for me.

I tried that once but I'll try it again. The only other thing I noticed is that he has a cable type and I don't. But I have no idea what kind of cable this is except a serial cable. Any idea what number that would be?

Thanks, well it's finding the drivers now and everything wants to work except I must be using the wrong portm it the only other thing that I can figure because it can't communicate with it. I'm using the same port as you are, not usb, because I googled and that's what port it told me to use. So I guess my next step is to try other ports. All 50+ something of them! :o Unless somebody has a better idea of how to figure out what port it's using? I know tty0 - tty5 are being used by other processes because I saw it when I ran ps aux.

unplugged and plugged it back in and now all I get is no response from ups. I'm not making any progress!