snmp_config

SNMP.CONF(5)                       Net-SNMP                       SNMP.CONF(5)



NAME
       snmp_config - describes how to configure the Net-SNMP applications.

DESCRIPTION
       The  Net-SNMP package uses various configuration files to configure its
       applications.  This manual page merely describes the overall nature  of
       them, so that the other manual pages don't have to.

DIRECTORIES SEARCHED
       First  off,  there  are numerous places that configuration files can be
       found and read from.  By default, the applications look for  configura-
       tion   files   in   the  following  4  directories,  in  order:  /snmp,
       /usr/share/snmp, /usr/lib/snmp, and  $HOME/.snmp.   In  each  of  these
       directories,  it  looks  for files with the extension of both .conf and
       .local.conf (reading the second ones last).  In this manner, there  are
       8  default places a configuration file can exist for any given configu-
       ration file type.

       Additionally, the above default search path can be overridden  by  set-
       ting the environment variable SNMPCONFPATH to a colon-separated list of
       directories to search for.

       Finally, applications that store persistent data will also look in  the
       /var/net-snmp directory for configuration files there.

CONFIGURATION FILE TYPES
       Each  application may use multiple configuration files, which will con-
       figure various different aspects of the application.  For instance, the
       SNMP  agent (snmpd) knows how to understand configuration directives in
       both the snmpd.conf and the snmp.conf files.  In  fact,  most  applica-
       tions  understand  how  to  read  the  contents of the snmp.conf files.
       Note, however, that configuration directives understood in one file may
       not  be  understood in another file.  For further information, read the
       associated manual page with each configuration file type.   Also,  most
       of  the  applications support a -H switch on the command line that will
       list the configuration files it will look for  and  the  directives  in
       each one that it understands.

       The  snmp.conf configuration file is intended to be a application suite
       wide configuration file that supports directives that  are  useful  for
       controlling  the  fundamental  nature  of all of the SNMP applications,
       such as how they all manipulate and parse the textual SNMP MIB files.

SWITCHING CONFIGURATION TYPES IN MID-FILE
       It's possible to switch in mid-file the  configuration  type  that  the
       parser  is  supposed  to  be reading.  Since that sentence doesn't make
       much sense, lets give you an example: say that you wanted  to  turn  on
       packet  dumping output for the agent by default, but you didn't want to
       do that for the rest of the applications (ie, snmpget, snmpwalk,  ...).
       Normally  to enable packet dumping in the configuration file you'd need
       to put a line like:

              dumpPacket true

       into the snmp.conf file.  But, this would turn it on  for  all  of  the
       applications.  So, instead, you can put the same line in the snmpd.conf
       file so that it only applies to the snmpd daemon.  However, you need to
       tell  the parser to expect this line.  You do this by putting a special
       type specification token inside a [] set.  In other words, inside  your
       snmpd.conf file you could put the above snmp.conf directive by adding a
       line like so:

              [snmp] dumpPacket true

       This tells the parser to parse the above line as if it  were  inside  a
       snmp.conf  file  instead of an snmpd.conf file.  If you want to parse a
       bunch of lines rather than just one  then  you  can  make  the  context
       switch  apply  to  the  remainder of the file or until the next context
       switch directive by putting the special token on a line by itself:

              # make this file handle snmp.conf tokens:
              [snmp]
              dumpPacket true
              logTimestamp true
              # return to our original snmpd.conf tokens:
              [snmpd]
              rocommunity mypublic

COMMENTS
       Any lines beginning with the character '#' in the  configuration  files
       are treated as a comment and are not parsed.

API INTERFACE
       Information  about  writing  C  code  that  makes use of this system in
       either the agent's MIB modules or in applications can be found  in  the
       read_config(3) manual page.

SEE ALSO
       read_config(3).



4th Berkeley Distribution         28 Aug 2001                     SNMP.CONF(5)