Lenovo Ideacentre - how to start on power application?

[Bo Berglund]

On Wed, 16 Oct 2024 18:25:09 +0100, David Fletcher <dave at thefletchers.net>
wrote:

>My home server runs on a very low power industrial Mini ITX board by
>Jetway. It also has power protection from an APC UPS with USB
>communication. There is a BIOS setting in these boards to automatically
>boot when power is applied.

I wish I could find a reasonably priced computer that is NOT requiring to be
using Windows as the base!
I just want to run server type systems with no monitor attached...
This Lenovo has an included Operating system that is the Windows10 idioticy.

What I probably should try to get is a barebones system with decent amounts of
RAM and solid-state disk but not designed to be a desktop Windows-ready
computer. But since it runs a lot of simultaneous tasks 24/7 it needs a sizable
data disk, preferably physically separate from the operating system disk, which
should just hold the operating system(s) and no client data.

If it is physically sized down compared to the Lenovo it would be a boon too.

And of course it should have a config to boot when power is applied.
Shutting it down with a Linux command while power is on should keep it off but
if it is in that state and then power is switched off/on then it should boot.

In fact I have another Linux (Mint) device in a remote location that has power
applied through a ShellyPlug so I can restart it the hard way by cycling power
on it. This has worked fine for that system and it does not run any Windows.

>I assume that when the UPS battery is
>discharged to the preset threshold due to utility power failure,
>apcupsd instructs the UPS via the USB cable to power down after a time
>delay that permits the server to shut down properly. Then when utility
>power returns, the UPS starts up and applies power to the server which
>then reboots even if I am 1000 miles away on holiday.

Well, in my case the UPS comm signal is hooked into a Synology NAS which has
support for my UPS brand for managing the UPS operations.
The Ubuntu box uses nut (sudo apt install nut) to listen to the traffic from the
UPS and sees that a shutdown is needed.

>Fortunately this is a very rare occurrence in SW England but it has
>happened and everything shut down and rebooted as expected.

For me it happened twice in less than 2 weeks while I was travelling....


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden