DaveQB's Rambles

I am surprised it took me this long to work this out but the init script for apcupsd on my Proxmox VE server, which runs Debian Lenny, is broken. Two things it does wrong, 1) It does not create a pid file when it starts which is not terrible, but the stop procedure relies on their being a pid to stop it and gives up if there is not one. And 2) it does not pass the default /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf file as the -f argument. So any changes you make to it are ignored in the running daemon. Add to that some other little scripting best practices are not followed, I have edited it and here it is. All working for me. Any feedback welcome:

#!/bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             apcupsd
# Required-Start:       $syslog
# Required-Stop:        $syslog
# Should-Start:         $local_fs
# Should-Stop:          $local_fs
# Default-Start:        2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 6
# Short-Description:    Starts apcupsd daemon
# Description:          apcupsd provides UPS power management for APC products.
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/sbin/apcupsd
CONFIG=/etc/default/apcupsd
NAME=apcupsd
DESC="UPS power management"
PID=/var/run/apcupsd.pid
test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
test -e $CONFIG || exit 0

set -e

. $CONFIG

if [ $ISCONFIGURED = no ]
then
        echo "Please check your configuration ISCONFIGURED in /etc/default/apcupsd"
        exit 0
fi


case "$1" in
        start)
                echo -n "Starting $DESC: "

                rm -f /etc/apcupsd/powerfail

                if [ "$(pidof apcupsd)" == "" ]
                then
                        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --make-pidfile --pidfile $PID --exec $DAEMON -- -f /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf
                        echo "$NAME."
                else
                        echo ""
                        echo "A copy of the daemon is still running.  If you just stopped it,"
                        echo "please wait about 5 seconds for it to shut down."
                        exit 0
                fi
                ;;

        stop)
                echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
                start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --pidfile $PID|| echo "Not Running."
                rm -f $PID
                echo "$NAME."
                ;;

        restart|force-reload)
                $0 stop
                sleep 10
                $0 start
                ;;

        status)
                $APCACCESS status
                ;;

        *)
                echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
                exit 1
                ;;
esac

exit 0

I have used No-Ip (Maybe 10 years now). It is a Dynamic DNS service like DyDNS etc. It is good but it is limited how many clients you can have much like all others. So I have toyed with setting up something myself as I have a public Linux DNS server to receive the updated IP info. After trying a few methods that had varying success, I concluded that the following was the best method. DOMAIN would equal a domain name you have set aside for this purose.

1. We setup passwordless ssh to the server. Do a search online with your favourite search engine as there is losts of tutorials already published for this.
2. On client side we run every 10mins

   FILE="DOMAIN-ip"
   curl  ifconfig.me/ip -o  "$FILE"  &>/dev/null
   scp  -q "$FILE" dward.name:
   exit 0
   

3. Setup the zone to accept updates by adding the following to your named.conf for bind9:

   allow-update { localhost;};

   Restart bind9
4. On the server side run hourly cronjob or anything to your hearts content:

   PHY="$(cat DOMAIN-ip)"
   TEMP="$(/bin/mktemp)"
   CMDS="$(/bin/mktemp)"
   CUR="$(host -t A DOMAIN localhost |grep DOMAIN|cut -d' ' -f4)"
   if [ ! "$CUR" == "$PHY" ]
   then
           TIME="$(date +%s)"
   	cat > $CMDS <<EOF
   	update delete DOMAIN A
   	update add DOMAIN 1800 A $PHY
   	send
   	EOF
   /usr/bin/nsupdate $CMDS
   rm -f $CMDS
   rm -f $TEMP
   fi
   

Edit anything there to your needs of course.
References: https://www.debian-administration.org/users/JulienV/weblog/4
http://www.shakabuku.org/writing/dyndns.html