10.3;snmpd (SNMP daemon), revision 1.0, 90/3/12
snmpd- Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) server
usage: /etc/snmpd [-d]
DESCRIPTION
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) server, /etc/snmpd, is a
daemon that runs on an Apollo node that is being monitored and controlled
by a network management station in a TCP/IP internet. Invoking snmpd
enables user processes on network management stations to get management
statistics from the Apollo node. You must start snmpd at run time (from
the command line) or at boot time (from the node's /etc/rc.local startup
file) on every node in a TCP/IP internet that is to be managed by a
network management station. Apollo's implementation of snmpd is fully
compliant with RFC 1098.
By default, snmpd responds to incoming ("get") requests that contain any
SNMP community name. The community name is a character string that is
part of the datagram packet sent by the management application to snmpd.
The community name identifies to snmpd what SNMP community the packet
belongs to. An example of a commonly-used community name is the
character string "public."
However, you can restrict access to network statistics by explicitly
specifying one community name in the /etc/smnpd.conf file. If you
specify a community name in /etc/snmpd.conf, then snmpd responds only to
incoming requests containing the community name listed in
/etc/snmpd.conf. For information about using the /etc/snmpd.conf file,
see the snmpd.conf manual page. (Also, see the Notes section below for
an important security consideration about community names.)
When invoked with no options, snmpd runs as a background process that
accepts any community name and does not print debug information.
OPTIONS
-d Print debug information.
Default if omitted: no debug information printed
FILES
/etc/snmpd
NOTES
All objects defined in the MIB (RFC 1066) are accessible via snmpd.
However, snmpd only supports "get" (retrieval) operations on objects at
this time. For security reasons, attempts to perform "set" (alter)
operations return an error.
At this time, our SNMP implementation does not support an authentication
scheme. Consequently, snmpd does not attempt to validate whether a
packet actually belongs to the community indicated by its community name.
Using a management application to query a node for SNMP information can
result in performance degradation on both Apollo and non-Apollo nodes in
a TCP/IP-based internet. This degradation is related to the SNMP protocol
itself, and not to our implementation of the protocol. For example, when
a management station queries a remote node with fifteen entries in its
routing table to dump its tables, this operation takes a mimimum of 300
datagram packets to complete. Therefore, we recommend that you avoid
excessive querying of gateways and heavily used nodes, such as file
servers, whenever possible.
SEE ALSO
snmpd.conf;
RFC 1065 (Structure and Identification of Management Information for
TCP/IP-based internets),
RFC 1066 (Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-
based internets),
RFC 1098 (A Simple Network Management Protocol).