<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 5.5.2653.12"> <TITLE>SNMP authentication for plugins</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> I'm in the process of writing a few plugins in perl that use Net::SNMP to monitor certain elements of the net-snmpd host resources mib and possibly some custom scripted mibs. One thing I've noticed is that all the snmp-related scripts use SNMP v1 or v2c for getting data from the clients - which is why I am re-writing them. I want to use SNMP v3, especially using the 'snmpkey' script that comes with the Net::SNMP perl module. (FYI: I can't get SNMP::Session to compile on Solaris 9) With SNMP v3, it's not very wise to put authpassword and privpassword data on the command line of a check script. Right now I have my authentication info embedded in the script. However, if I plan to share my scripts with the community, there has to be a simpler method for authentication - no 'end-user' (including myself) wants to edit every check script for authentication. I propose one of two solutions: Easy - create an snmpauth.pm module to put in the libexec dir. It contains only simple constructor that creates a Net::SNMP->session object with the authentication info embedded in it. I will only be used by modules that need it. Hard - modify utils.pm to include a similar constructor, but reads authentication info from some config file. Obviously if Net::SNMP isn't present this sub shouldn't cause the utils module to barf. However, the whole reason I'm posting this to the list is to solicit opinions or hear other people's solutions (including ones I might have missed already included in docs / plugins). P.S. I'm using the netsaint 1.2.9-4 plugins because I couldn't get the autoconf/autoheader/automake/configure/make thing working on Solaris 9 with Sun's SFW crap. However, I have been reading the documentation and source for the 1.3-beta1 plugins for tips and coding conventions. -- "Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes" -- Edsger Dijkstra --------------------------------------------------------- Anthony Tonns, UNIX Administrator - atonns@mail.ivillage.com </BODY> </HTML>