Re: I need advice with UPS connection. (ping)

On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 10:35 PM Filipe Laíns [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, 2021-11-22 at 15:13 -0500, Alan Stern wrote:

quoted

On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 11:25:26AM -0500, David Niklas wrote:

quoted

Ok, I first edited the kernel to return -ENOMEM like you suggested but
the UPS still disconnected. I then edited it again to re-add the 1060
byte request and the UPS still disconnected.

I'm attaching the usbmon traces.
If you need any additional info I'll do my best to provide it.

Holy cow!  I just realized what's going on.  And these little changes
we've been messing around with have nothing to do with it.

For the first time, I looked at the timestamps in the usbmon traces.  It
turns out that the disconnects occur several seconds after the kernel
retrieves the HID report descriptor from the device.  Under normal
conditions we would expect to see report packets coming in from the
device, starting just a fraction of a second after the descriptor is
received.  But that isn't happening in the Linux traces, whereas it does
happen in the Windows pcap log.

I would guess that the UPS is programmed to disconnect itself
electronically from the USB bus if it doesn't get any requests for
reports within a couple of seconds.  That certainly would explain what
you've been seeing.  I can't imagine why it would be programmed to
behave this way, but companies have been known to do stranger things.

As for why the kernel doesn't try to get the reports...  That's a little
harder to answer.  Maybe Jiri or Benjamin will know something about it.

I am not sure exactly what is going on there.
There are a couple of things that come to my mind:
- for quite some time now, we don't fetch all reports whenever we
connect a new device. This was known to be problematic on some devices
(see all the devices with HID_QUIRK_NOGET or
HID_QUIRK_NO_INIT_REPORT), and the default to not poll input values on
plug for devices is actually safer. If you want to revert, we will
have to have a special driver for this one I guess
- HID_QUIRK_ALWAYS_POLL *might* be a way to force the device to stay
with a USB connection up.

quoted

The UPS's vendor ID is 0d9f (POWERCOM) and the product ID is 0004.  Now,
the drivers/hid/hid-quirks.c file contains a quirk entry for 0d9f:0002
(product POWERCOM_UPS), which is probably an earlier model of the same
device, or a very similar device.  This quirk entry is in the
hid_ignore_list; it tells the HID core not to handle the device at all.

I don't know why that quirk entry is present, and furthermore, it can't
directly affect what is happening with your device because the product
IDs are different.  Still, it is an indication that something strange is
going on behind the scenes.

Perhaps there is no kernel driver for these UPS devices?  Perhaps the
intention is that some user program will handle all the communication
when one of them is detected?  A quick search on Google turns up
usbhid-ups, part of Network USB Tools (NUT) -- maybe you need to
install that package in order to use the device.

I don't have enough experience with UPS here to be helpful,
unfortunately. But What Alan said made a lot of sense. Maybe the NUT
people will have a better insight.

quoted

I don't know what the full story is.  With luck, Jiri or Benjamin can
help more.

Alan Stern

hid-generic should be able to handle these devices, but UPSes are much less
tested than normal input peripherals, so it's not that surprising that there may
be some unexpected weirdness. FWIW, I have two UPSes, one works OOTB and the
other doesn't, I have been meaning to investigate the issue. However, David's
case seems to me like a hardware quirk, but that's just my guess.

Yep, that seems to validate the fact that this UPS needs some care...

Cheers,
Benjamin