TUTORIAL: APC UPS management with apcupsd (page 2)

Attaching the UPS:

After following the instructions and plugging in the UPS to charge for 24 hours offline, you should now safely be able to attach your UPS to your machine. A Note of warning: Please be sure to follow all safety cautions and warnings with regards to your UPS as mishandling it may cause serious injury and/or damage to your machine. I cannot accept any responsibility for any damage that may come to you or your machine while connecting your UPS.

With that said, it should not be much more difficult than:
1) powering down your computer and accessories;
2) plugging in your UPS to a wall outlet;
3) deciding which power should be on battery back-up (I chose my PDA, CPU and monitor) and plugging those into the uninteruptable outlets on the UPS;
4) plugging the rest of the equipment into the surge-only (protected) outlets on the UPS (if available);

At this point, I would hold off on connecting the communications link to the PC. This is basically, so you can watch to see what exactly your computer says when it first sees the device.

5) Turn on the UPS, and then boot up your computer and log-in.

Detecting the UPS:

As root, on the command-line, run:

% tail -f /var/log/messages

Now, carefully plug in the communications link between the UPS and the computer (In my case, it was an ethernet connection to the UPS via the Data Port and a USB connection to my computer) and watch what scrolls down the screen:

% tail -f /var/log/messages
Mar  5 13:59:53 valles kernel: usb.c: USB disconnect on device 02:01.0-1 address 3
Mar  5 13:59:54 valles kernel: hub.c: new USB device 02:01.0-1, assigned address 4
Mar  5 13:59:55 valles devlabel: devlabel service started/restarted
Mar  5 13:59:59 valles kernel: hiddev0: USB HID v1.10 Device [American Power Conversion Back-UPS RS 1500 FW:8.g8 .D USB FW:g8 ] on usb2:4.0
Mar  5 14:00:02 valles usb.agent[11225]: missing kernel or user mode driver hid
Mar  5 14:00:04 valles devlabel: devlabel service started/restarted

Great. It recognizes the USB connection and correctly identifies the UPS. Things cannot be much sweeter.

To get out of the tail command, just hit CONTROL-C in the command window.

Next: Configuration