SNMPASK(1) — NEWS-OS Programmer’s Manual

NAME

snmpask − generic SNMP querying application

SYNOPSIS

snmpask configfile

DESCRIPTION

snmpask is a generic querying application designed to ’sit’ on a host and query a gateway for information over an extended period of time. What information is requested, from which gateway, and how often the information is requested are all dictated by the snmpask configuration file configfile (described below). snmpask is an application process, started up on a per-gateway basis. There can be more than one snmpask process running on any given host at a time. Each snmpask invocation is used to query a single gateway, and hence there should be multiple, separate invocations of snmpask if multiple gateways are to be queried. There are some obvious limitations within this model, as each monitored gateway will require a separate process, with the ’normal’ UNIX process resource requirements. At this time, it is not possible to make ’generic’ global requests of all gateways, via IP multicast facilities. Currently, all snmpask output is logged to UNIX flat files.

SNMPASK CONFIGURATION FILE

The snmpask configuration file is consulted upon startup of an snmpask process. Fields within this file are used to determine which networks are to be queried, the values of which variables (on a per-network basis) are to be requested, and how often the gateway is to be queried. Options in the configuration file are:

-AGENT agent how-often interval - query gateway gw how-often times at intervals of interval. agent may be specified as a dot notation IP address (such as ’128.84.248.254’) or host name. how-often can take on the values nTIMES (query n times, including 1TIMES) or FOREVER (query forever); interval determines the interval between queries (in seconds). Note that interval has to be specified in integral seconds; specifying an interval with fractions of a second is an error. A further limit on interval is that the value specified may not exceed 2∗∗32 - 1. As each snmpask process is only intended to query a single gateway, it is an error to have more than one of these lines in a configuration file. In this case, the last entry may be correct.

-LOG variable filename - log values received for variable variable in file filename. In each configuration file, at least one of these lines should occur. Variable names should begin with ’_mgmt_mib’. For example, to obtain the value of the variables ’_iso_org_dod_internet_mgmt_mib_system_sysDescr_0’ use the abbreviation ’_mgmt_mib_system_sysDescr_0’.

-COMMUNITY community_name - configure the community name for queries so that it is community_name. This is a required parameter, that must occur once in every configuration file. The default is "public".

LOG OUTPUT

Output from snmpask generally occurs to the UNIX flat files whose names were specified in the snmpask configuration file. The format of these files is:

Time StampSource IP AddressVariableValue

FILES

/etc/snmp.variablesThe variable initfile
configfileThe snmpask configfile
fileFiles to log variable values

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