Conference netcad::hub_mgnt

1711.0. "SNMP Counters/MIB walking/Conifg restore/Death on VMS" by PTOJJD::DANZAK (Pittsburgher �) Mon Nov 21 1994 09:50

    My customer wants to SNMP manage the DEChub900 series in production. 
    That is, they will GRUDGINGLY accept the need to use HUBWATCH to
    initially set-up the hub, but want to use a NETbuilder workstation to
    monitor the thing.
    
    1.) They've taken the time and compiled ALL the MIBs from us into
        the netbuilder....but when they 'walk the MIB' they see that
        evertyhing is lumped under a .36 or .38 entry (mumble.mubmle.mubmle
        .thirtysomething.moremumble)  They can't seem to find the counters
        for the interfaces which is what they really want to see (on the
        DECbridge 900 for example.)
    
        Where can they find this?  What sequence of things/mibs should they
        be looking at to find it?
    
    2.) Is there an SNMP cookbook that gives hints/kinks and general
        info on the best way to use the MIBS?  (i.e. without reading
        all the MIB text and figuring it out....saying that "If you want
        to manage using the MIBs, you should use MIBS "A, B and C" in 
        this order etc...?  When my customer was trying this he
        finally came to the conculsion that he can to compile in
        everything but then seemed to need to do a lot of guessing to 
        figure out the MIB interrelationships etc.  (He also kept griping
        about where the MIBS violated standards in numbering or use
        of "_" - I asked him to mail specifics..)
    
    3.) Config Save/REstore is a big thing for them.  Any description of
        the planned capability for the next wave?
    
    
    4.) I spent 6 $#*($7$#*&@$*@ hours trying to get HUBWATCH to work on
        a VAXstation 3100 - old monocrome one - with 12 meg of memory.
        I know....it's slow, underconfigured - but it was the ONE thing
        that they had.  I reinstalled MOTIF, it's running V5.5-2?(i think)
        of VMS, I did an AUTHGEN and reset the parameters to initial
        etc...but HUBWATCH kep saying that  - after it got contact
        with the HUB - that it got a "MWM failure " (Motif window
        manager) and could not open a .UID file that was there?  ANy
        thoughts?  I even scrounged the notes to check the UNDOCUMENTED
        need for the CHANNELCNT parameter to be high....to no avail.
        I finally said 'hell with it' and ripped a station from the
        office and brought it in to the university.  ANy thoughts?
        I'd LOVE to know why!
    
    Thanks,
    j
    

All the DEChub devices support all the standard MIBs, in addition to the DEC
extensions.  All the MIBs are publicly available.  The way HUBwatch works is
that the HUBwatch engineers read the MIBs and talk with the device firmware
people and hash out what's important.  So, the documentation on which MIB
variables is important is HUBwatch itself.

Save and Restore, in the design phase now, has two major components.  An
interpreter/compiler which interprets a save/restore script language, and
uncompiled save and restore scripts.  All writeable variables are saved
and restored by the scripts.  

You need a minimum of 16meg to run HUBwatch on a VAX.  Trying to run it
with 12 meg won't work.

Tom Hood
HUBwatch

    
    I have been monitoring the hubs on our own network here with a generic
    SNMP package for some months.  
    
    There is no substitute for reading the MIBS; most of them contain
    excellent comments on how they can be used.  You can get most of what
    you would want just from the standard MIBs.  The counters for the
    interfaces are all in MIB-II, and not under our enterprise branch
    (which is the .36).
    
    If you look in our dec_hub900* mibs you'll find an Internet mail
    address that anyone can send suggestions or questions to.