uri@arnor.watson.ibm.COM (Uri Blumenthal) (01/03/91)
Hello, I'd like to discuss with you one problem we have running SNMP. There are "normal" devices (like Ethernet, Token-Ring, and whatever you yourself put into ISODE 6.7). And of course when Unix boots up, it initializes them, marking the devices either up or down. Then SNMP can "read" the status of each device, and everything is OK. Now - we have some "special" devices. Example - Virtual Channel-to-Channel adaptor (VCTC). They are "initialized" only when "ifconfig" is issued for them, and BEFORE this they don't even have ifnet structure allocated. But they do show up on "netstat -in" output though, with "none" in all the fields (of course). When SNMP hits one of those - it returns "NoSuchName" on ifIndex (and it also makes sense). But the problem is: our customer complains about this, and they point us on SMI-MIB, which says that "ifIndex" should be present anyway (status "mandatory"). My question for you is: how should we deal with such devices? Should we request OS manufacturer to change the procedure of initializing VCTC's (so that ifnet will be allocated, when the system boots up)? Then the obvious question would be - OK, what to set all those values to? There's nothing known yet! Or can we leave it as it is (i.e. ifIndex, ifOperStatus etc are "NoSuchName" - because there *is* no status yet: in order to "become" TCP/IP device (which can be up or down) there must be an "ifconfig" command issued first... What is your opinion and advice? Regards, Uri Blumenthal uri@ibm.com ---------------------- <Disclaimer>