Developing SMUX peers for SNMP agents

Configuration files

There are two configuration files of interest to the programmer implementing an SMUX peer: the foosmuxd.defs file discussed previously in this chapter under ``Compiling MIB modules'' and the file /etc/snmpd.peers.

The SNMP agent uses the file /etc/snmpd.peers to authenticate registration requests from SMUX peers. The file entries consist of four items, the last of which is optional:

name: of an SMUX peer.
object-id: a dot-notation representation of the SMUX peer's object identifier.
password: in unencrypted form, which the agent compares with the password received in the OpenPDU from the peer. As the passwords are not encrypted, this file must be in protected mode ``0600'' and owned by root.
[priority]: registration: priority is what the SNMP agent uses to determine which SMUX peer to consult when more than one peer registers the same subtree. Legal values are 0 to (2[31] - 1); 0 has the highest priority, (2[31] - 1) the lowest. A special value of -1 can also be used to represent the highest available priority. If this optional field is supplied, it specifies the highest priority with which the SMUX peer can register subtrees.

The syntax for entries in /etc/snmpd.peers is shown below, along with an example entry. Tokens are separated by white space; to avoid unexpected separation of multiple-word tokens, surround the token with double quotes. Lines beginning with ``#'' are regarded as comments and hence ignored by the agent.

   # <name>    <object-id>         <password>       [<priority>]
   #
   "foo"       1.3.6.1.4.1.9999    "aintNoThing"    -1

The name/OID pairs are assigned by the authority for the BSD UNIX MIB. Contact Marshall Rose (see ``References'' for address information) to register the name of your peer and get an OID for it.