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| <h1>Help Caveats</h1> |
| <br> |
| There are a few anomalies in the help files for Net-SNMP that deserve |
| your attention.<br> |
| <h2>1. Volunteers are welcomed</h2> |
| Please understand that this is a volunteer effort. Suggestions |
| are welcomed. Offers to contribute are encouraged.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h2>2. Documentation format is mostly fixed width<br> |
| </h2> |
| The documentation is set for fixed width text. Changing this would be |
| time consuming and would have to be re-done for each release if the |
| original man pages change. See the note on offers to contribute.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h2>3. Conventions may be different from what you are used to</h2> |
| The Net-SNMP project is subject to conventions that may conflict with |
| what you may have been comfortably using. If you are not aware of |
| these conventions, there will be hours of entertainment in store for |
| you. Please know that the Net-SNMP coders are sympathetic to |
| different conventions, but as conventions go, these are not too |
| distasteful.<br> |
| <br> |
| CLI = MS-DOS command line interpreter. When you open a command |
| prompt window, you are using the CLI.<br> |
| <br> |
| SH = UNIX command shell. May be sh, bash, ksh, csh, all are |
| variations on the UNIX command shell.<br> |
| <ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;"> |
| <li>If you use .BAT files, follow the MS-DOS conventions.</li> |
| <li>If you use GNU shell, follow the UNIX conventions.</li> |
| <li>If you don't know what you are using, follow the MS-DOS |
| conventions.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <h3>3.1 Environment variables</h3> |
| MS-DOS convention used in CLI as would be used in a batch file:<br> |
| <ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha; font-family: monospace;"> |
| <li>create : set |
| MYVAR=myvalue</li> |
| <li>use |
| : %MYVAR%</li> |
| <li>view |
| : echo %MYVAR%</li> |
| <li>destroy : set MYVAR=</li> |
| <li>%MYVAR% and %MyVar% are the same</li> |
| <li>values with embedded spaces must be bracketed using double quotes.</li> |
| </ol> |
| UNIX convention used in SH as would be used in a shell script:<br> |
| <ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha; font-family: monospace;"> |
| <li>create : |
| MYVAR=myvalue ; export MYVAR</li> |
| <li>use |
| : $MYVAR</li> |
| <li>view |
| : echo $MYVAR</li> |
| <li>destroy : unset MYVAR</li> |
| <li>$MYVAR and $MyVar are _not_ the same!</li> |
| <li>values with embedded spaces must be bracketed using double quotes.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <h3>3.2 Pathname specifiers</h3> |
| MS-DOS convention used in CLI as would be used in a batch file:<br> |
| <ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;"> |
| <li>volume names (drive letters) [A-Z] followed by colon ":" are |
| acceptable.</li> |
| <li>Directory segments are separated using the backslash "\"</li> |
| <li>UNC components of pathnames may work</li> |
| </ol> |
| UNIX convention used in SH as would be used in a shell script or in a |
| configuration file:<br> |
| <ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;"> |
| <li>volume names [A-Z] followed by colon ":" are acceptable.</li> |
| <li>Directory segments are separated using the slash "/"</li> |
| <li>UNC components of pathnames do _not_ work!</li> |
| </ol> |
| <span style="font-weight: bold;">Note: All paths contained in |
| configuration files must use forward slashes (Unix convention), NOT |
| back slashes.</span><br> |
| <h3>3.3 List delimiters</h3> |
| MS-DOS convention used in CLI as would be used in a batch file:<br> |
| <ol style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;"> |
| <li>Elements are separated using the semi-colon ";".</li> |
| <li>The last element must not be empty [list does not end with ";"].</li> |
| </ol> |
| <br> |
| The UNIX convention is not listed, because the Net-SNMP project, when |
| it is built on Windows platforms, honors the MS-DOS convention for |
| lists.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h2>4. Pathnames are different than they appear to be</h2> |
| The manual pages were written over a period of years and for systems |
| that were primarily UNIX-based. The pathnames are not absolutely |
| the same as what you see in the documentation.<br> |
| <br> |
| You can pretty much see that many paths start with "/usr/local". |
| For this platform, most of the time, you can substitute the instllation |
| folder of Net-SNMP for "/usr/local". For example, c:\usr or |
| c:\Program Files\Net-SNMP.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h2>5. Configuration Files</h2> |
| All the configuration files follow the UNIX conventions for pathnames |
| and the MS-DOS convention for list delimiters.<br> |
| <br> |
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