* APC patch for UPS management software
American Power Conversion (APC), a maker of uninterruptible power supplies for servers and workstations, has fixed a problem with its PowerChute management software that could disable servers and cause downtime for customers.
The company issued a new version of PowerChute in April that fixes the problem, which started acting up when a certificate to the Sun Java Runtime Environment in older versions of the software expired July 27. PowerChute ensures the safe shutdown of servers and workstations in the event of a power failure.
Network World became aware of the problem when a reader, Ron Mobilia of Applied Digital in Del Ray Beach, Fla., contacted us by e-mail. “Please help me get this important information out to your readers and my IT family before it affects them like it affected me,” he wrote.
Mobilia went on to say:
“APC PowerChute Business Edition software is used to shut down systems that are connected to APC UPSs in the event of a power failure. The versions prior to 7.02 will make systems unresponsive upon reboot due to the July 27, 2005, expiration of the Sun Java Runtime Environment certificate used in their software.
“Rebooting your server or restarting this service resulted in a two-plus-hour restart followed by another two-hour wait to log in. My back-up jobs failed because the affected server would not respond to the backup server, resulting in a ‘hung’ job.
”The problem ruined my weekend because the issue did not log any event log-related hints, and getting control of the server was difficult due to the time it took to log in after each reboot.”
When we called APC, the company explained that it had encouraged PowerChute users to upgrade to the newest version. APC thought it had gotten the bulk of users to do this, but apparently missed a few who had not filled out the warranty cards included with their UPSs.
Upgrades to PowerChute are free. Users with older versions of the software should upgrade before what happened to Mobilia happens to them.
The newest version of PowerChute can be downloaded here.
Instructions are available there that explain how to do the upgrade.
