UPSUTIL OVERVIEW
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Functional Overview
Through a very simple "command keyword" user interface, the UPSUTIL program provides the following functions pertaining to the management of UPS devices and the UPS Monitor/iX subsystem on HP e3000 systems running MPE/iX Release 5.0 "Push" or later releases:
A configuration query function that obtains and displays the list of UPS Ldevs (logical devices) that are in the I/O configuration of the system that is running.
A status query function that obtains and displays the current status of the UPS Monitor/iX subsystem process (running or not running; power normal or power failed; number of UPS devices being monitored) and of each of the configured UPS devices (Ldev number, allocated/not allocated, initialized/not initialized, operational state, power condition, and UPS hardware status).
A control function that halts the UPS Monitor/iX subsystem process, if it is currently running.
A control function that starts the UPS Monitor/iX subsystem process, if it is not currently running.
A control function that restarts (stops, then immediately starts) the UPS Monitor/iX subsystem process, if it is currently running.
A configuration function that selects a new user-defined configuration file to be used by the UPS Monitor subsystem.
A control function that resets (clears) the UPS Monitor's information pertaining to the previous execution (if any) of a UPS powerfail "grace period" timeout and a UPS powerfail "user command file".
A "help" function that displays the menu of UPSUTIL's commands.
An "exit" functions that ends UPSUTIL program execution.
Product Invocation and Security
Like any MPE/iX program, UPSUTIL is activated by being ":run" from the Command Interpreter in a job or in a session. However, because the user of UPSUTIL can affect the operation of the system's UPS Monitor Process, there are security restrictions on running the UPSUTIL program. UPSUTIL should not be accessible to ordinary system users because of UPSUTIL's ability to affect execution of the system's UPS Monitor Process. Therefore UPSUTIL has been implemented as a Privileged-Mode Program, and is limited in accessibility to privileged system users, such as System Managers and HP Service Personnel. Security to prevent unauthorized access to the UPSUTIL program is provided by two factors:
UPSUTIL is a "Privileged Mode" program. This requires that, in order to run, it reside in a file group.account that has the PM capability associated with both the group and the account.
UPSUTIL requires that its user have "System Manager" (SM) capability in order to be able to run the UPSUTIL program. Users without SM capability can not run UPSUTIL.
![[UPSUTIL Invocation]](img/gfx3.gif)
Use of Files
UPSUTIL uses only two files in its operation. It reads its commands from the Pascal INPUT file (job/session $STDIN file), and writes its output (prompts for commands, progress messages, error messages, and display information resulting from command execution) to the Pascal OUTPUT file (job/session $STDLIST) file. Revision of March 2000: Version 8: UPSUTIL now also uses "UPS Monitor configuration files", as described in the NEWCONFIG command. (Actually, UPSUTIL does not, per se, "use" these files — it never opens a UPS Monitor configuration file; it simply acquires from the user the file name of a configuration file, and passes that file name to the UPS Monitor, which actually opens and uses the file.) Revision of December 2001: Version 9: Introduction of the "user-specified UPS powerfail command file". This is an MPE/iX CI command file that can be specified by a configuration command within the UPS Monitor configuration file. When so specified, this command file will be executed by the MPE/iX CI at a user-specified time following the detection by the UPS Monitor of a UPS device's powerfail signal. UPSUTIL itself does not access this file; it merely reports the file's specification (or lack thereof) in UPSUTIL's STATUS display.
Product Restrictions & Limitations
Because UPSUTIL was conceived to be a simple-to-use service tool, intended primarily for use by HP support personnel to help them to verify and troubleshoot the operation of the UPS Monitor/iX subsystem, UPSUTIL is not a "full-blown" MPE/iX software product implementation. In its initial implementation, UPSUTIL has the following restrictions and limitations. These could be alleviated by future enhancements if warranted.
Batch Mode Limitations
UPSUTIL is primarily intended to be operated interactively from an online user's terminal within an MPE/iX session, and although it can be operated within a batch job, it does not implement the file I/O functions that batch-mode applications usually possess. In particular, UPSUTIL assumes that its Input and Output files comprise an MPE/iX "duplicative file set" (i.e., input records that are read from the Input file are automatically written to and appear on the Output file), and so it makes no checks for duplicative input/output files and no provision for echoing the input records to the output file when the file set is not duplicative, as is the case in a batch job. So, while it is permissible to run UPSUTIL from a batch job, taking UPSUTIL's command inputs from $STDIN (or from a file-equated INPUT file) and writing UPSUTIL's output to $STDLIST (or to a file-equated OUTPUT file), when UPSUTIL is run in this fashion the commands read from INPUT will not be echoed to the OUTPUT file.Language Localization Limitation
UPSUTIL has made no provisions for national language localization. Instead, to speed development, as assumption was made that since the primary users of UPSUTIL will be HP support personnel, probably in the HP Response Centers, it will be acceptable to have an English-language-only implementation. Consequently, all UPSUTIL command input and display and error message output is hard-coded in English language in the ASCII character set.UPSUTIL User Interface
Type of User Interface
The UPSUTIL user interface is a simple "line mode" command and response interface, suitable for use on direct-connected user terminals and dial-up modem-connected remote user terminals with no special hardware features required in the terminal (e.g., no graphics capability is needed). UPSUTIL sequentially prompts the user for the next command (using the UPSUTIL command prompt shown at the bottom of Figure 32-1 UPSUTIL Invocation), reads the user's command from the Input file, executes the command, and displays the command's results (including warning or error messages, if any) on the Output file.UPSUTIL Commands Summary
The UPSUTIL commands are syntactically very simple: each command consists only of a single command-name keyword, such as "start". The UPSUTIL command set is summarized in the following (Table 32-1 UPSUTIL Commands Summary) Subsequent sections of this document explain the commands in detail. Table 32-1 UPSUTIL Commands SummaryGeneral Command Parser Errors
Since the UPSUTIL user interface for entering commands is very simple, there are only a few error conditions associated with entering commands. First, if a command keyword is simply mis-typed (misspelled), then UPSUTIL outputs the error message:
** ERROR: This command is not known to the UPSUTIL program,
command ignored.
Second, if a command keyword contains an invalid character,
such as a numeric digit or special punctuation character, then UPSUTIL
outputs the error message:
** ERROR: This command name is not legal, command ignored.Third, if a command keyword is just too long to be valid, then UPSUTIL outputs the error message:
** ERROR: This command name is too long, command ignored.
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Introduction |
UPSUTIL Commands |