README

DISCLAIMER

  The Author, the University of California, the University of
  California at Davis, and the Electrical Engineering department at
  the University of California at Davis assume no responsibility for
  damage or loss of system performance as a direct or indirect result
  of the use of this software.  This software is provided "as is"
  without express or implied warranty.

INTRO

  This package contains a port and modified code of the CMU 2.1.2.1
  snmp agent.  It has been modified to allow extensibility quickly
  and easily.  It is far from the best and most configurable systems;
  but hey: its free.
  
  A while back, we wanted to monitor problems on our network and hosts
  that were easily noticeable.  Therefore, we needed an extensible
  agent.  We started with the agent distributed with Ultrix 4.2, but
  had serious problems with it (there is now way to distinguish
  between get/getnext requests causing the agent to loop forever).
  Then we decided to look into the HP extensible agent.  Looked
  perfect.  Then we saw the price.  Too much for an educational
  facility (it was ~$1000/host but is now closer to $200/host).  

  We opted for the third route: modifying the CMU code to do the
  things we wanted.  This gives the added benefit of being free and
  would be identical on all the architectures we wished to support.
  This package is a result of that effort.

  We use this agent here to monitor known system problems before they
  take the machine over.  The agent can be easily configured to
  monitor the number of a given process running, run external scripts
  to check and report functional status.  Examples: mountd(s) under
  Ultrix 4.3 which tend to fork themselves crazy and eventually fill
  up the process table; On our hp700s, "amd" sometimes stops working,
  HP VUE hangs and fails to start X, etc.

  We use HP-OpenView to poll the enclosed agent every half an hour
  looking for these problems.  The problems are then logged in a file,
  which the programmers monitor using xlbiff.  Additionally, we use
  the perl/tk 'snmpcheck' script found in the local subdirectory to
  automatically check and fix these problems.  I don't know how useful
  this package will be to the outside world, but I thought I'd let you
  decide that for yourself.

SUPPORTED ARCHITECTURES

  I'm using it on these architectures:  

     hppa1.1-hp-hpux9.05
        -- I develop here...  Its the architecture best supported in
	   this package.  It is the only architecture that supports
	   swap space checks. 

     hppa1.1-hp-hpux10.01
       - known to work under 10.10
     mips-dec-ultrix4.3
       - known to work under 4.2, 4.4
     sparc-sun-solaris2.4
       - known to work under 2.3, 2.5
     sparc-sun-sunos4.1.4
       - known to work under 4.1.2, 4.1.3
     alpha-dec-osf3.2

     *-netbsd1.1
       - arp table mib disabled

  Please let me know if you compile it on other OS versions and it
  works for you so I can add them to the above list.

AVAILABILITY

  ftp.ece.ucdavis.edu:/pub/snmp/ucd-snmp.README
  ftp.ece.ucdavis.edu:/pub/snmp/ucd-snmp.tar.gz

  This file will always point to the latest revision.  If you see
  newer revisions in the directory marked with a -A[1-9] or -B[1-9]
  please note that these are alpha ports of the next release.  Beware.

INSTALLATION

  See the INSTALL file distributed with this package.

COPYING AND COPYRIGHTS
  
  See the COPYING file distributed with this package.

CODE UPDATE ANNOUNCEMENTS / MAILING LIST(s)

  See the NEWS file and the ChangeLog file for details on what changes
  between releases.

  I hate broadcasting announce messages to other mailing lists and
  newsgroups, so there is a mailing list setup to handle release
  announcements.  Anytime I put new software out for ftp, I'll mail it
  to ucd-snmp-announce@ece.ucdavis.edu.  To subscribe/unsubscribe
  yourself to/from this list, mail a note to
  ucd-snmp-announce-request@ece.ucdavis.edu with a subject line of
  'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe'.  I will post new announcements on a
  very infrequent basis to the other channels (the snmp mailing lists
  and comp.protocols.snmp), but only for major code revisions and not
  for bug-fix patches or small feature upgrades.

  The above mailing list is not a general purpose discussion list.  A
  separate list has been created for that purpose.  To subscribe to
  it, mail a note to ucd-snmp-request@ece.ucdavis.edu with a
  subject line of 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe'.  To use it, mail to 
  ucd-snmp@ece.ucdavis.edu.

EXTENSIBILITY

  The agent that comes with this package is extensible through use of
  shell scripts and other methods.  See the configuration manual pages
  and the EXAMPLE.conf file for details.

  Note:  This agent uses its own API for extensibility.  The IETF's
  agentx working group is working on developing a common API for
  subagent extensibility.  See them for details.

EXAMPLE USAGE 

  See the 'EXAMPLE.conf' file in this directory (you must build the
  package for this file to be generated).  Do NOT look at the
  EXAMPLE.conf.def file.  It will only confuse you.

CONFIGURATION

  See man/snmpd.conf.5 and the EXAMPLE.conf file mentioned above.

SNMPv1 vs. SNMPv2

  Typically, I doubt you want people to look at most of your mib tree.
  By defining GLOBALSECURITY in the config.h file, you can restrict
  access to any of the mibs implemented in this package to the
  security type you define it to.  I define mine to SNMPV2AUTH, or
  authenticated requests only.  I then define the SECURITYEXCEPTIONS
  to allow .100 requests, since HP Openview can only use SNMPv1
  protocols.  The CMU code does not have hooks for privacy protocols,
  so nothing is mentioned about it here.  If you don't understand
  anything I have said here, change GLOBALSECURITY to SNMPV1 and you
  shouldn't have problems.

THANKS

  The following people have contributed various patches and
  improvements.  To them I owe my deepest thanks (and you do too!):

    Dan A. Dickey <ddickey@transition.com>
    Dave Shield <D.T.Shield@csc.liv.ac.uk>
    Giovanni S. Marzot <gmarzot@baynetworks.com>
    Niels Baggesen <recnba@mediator.uni-c.dk>
    Mike Perik <mikep@crt.com>
    Sanjai Narain <narain@thumper.bellcore.com>
    francus@metsny.delphi.com

  I've probably forgotten people on this list.  Let me know if you've
  contributed code and I've left you out.

CLOSING

  Have fun,
  I love patches.   Send some to me!

  Also, I'm interested if anyone actually uses/likes/hates/whatever this
  package...  Mail me a note and let me know what you think of it!

Wes Hardaker
Wesley.Hardaker@sphys.unil.ch