test

Java Dynamic Management Kit 5.1 Tutorial

16.3.1 Specifying the Trap Destination

There are several methods in the SNMP protocol adaptor for sending traps to remote managers. They differ in their method signatures, depending upon whether or not you need to specify the destination host. When no host is specified, the SNMP protocol adaptor relies on the trap group definition in IP-based access control lists (InetAddressAcl), as described below.

In all cases, traps are sent to the port specified by the current value of the TrapPort attribute on the SnmpAdaptorServer or SnmpV3AdaptorServer MBean. In our simple agent, we set the trap port to 8086, but this can be changed at any time by a custom MIB implementation or a management application.

Although SNMPv3 implements user-based access control for other types of requests, traps and informs are always sent using InetAddressAcl, in all versions of SNMP.

16.3.1.1 Using an InetAddressAcl Trap Group

The methods below were used in Example 16–4 to send SNMPv1 and v3 traps. They are presented here with their SNMPv2 equivalent (see the Javadoc API for a description of the parameters).

Using these methods, you must first define the trap group in an InetAddressAcl. See 19.1 IP-Based Access Control Lists for a formal definition of the trap group and instructions for defining the InetAddressAcl file when starting the agent. By default, these lists are file-based, but you can implement other mechanisms, as described in 19.1.3 Custom Access Control.

In this example, we provide the following template file.

Example 16–7 Trap Group of the jdmk.acl File

acl = {
  …
}

trap = {
  {
  trap-community = public
  hosts = yourmanager
  }
}

The trap group lists all the hosts to which the SNMP protocol adaptor sends every trap. A community definition associates a community name with a list of hosts specified either by one of the following identifiers:

Hostname

The name of the host

IP v4 and IPv6 address

For example, 123.456.789.12 for IPv4, and fe80::a00:20ff:fe9b:ea82 for IPv6

IPv4 and IPv6 netmask prefix notation

For example, 123.456.789.12/24 for IPv4, and fe80::a00:20ff:fe9b:ea82/64 for IPv6

All hosts in a community definition receive the trap in a PDU identified by the community name.

Note –

Because access control and trap recipients share the same file, you must fully define the access control when you want to send traps using the InetAddressAcl mechanism.

Given this definition, traps are sent to a host called yourmanager, and the community string of the trap PDU would contain the value public. By adding community definitions to this file, you can specify all hosts that will receive traps along with the community string for each host or group of hosts.

Note –

SNMPv3 does not use the community string to identify destinations. Only use the manager's IP address when creating an SNMPv3 trap group, or the contextName to define the scope of the requests sent.

If the InetAddressAcl file is not defined, or if the trap group is empty, the default behavior of these methods is to send a trap only to the local host.

16.3.1.2 Specifying the Hostname Directly

The other methods of the SNMP protocol adaptor, one for each trap version, enable you to send a trap to a specified recipient:

In the first two cases, these methods take an address and a community string, in addition to the version-specific trap information. The address is an InetAddress object that is usually instantiated by its static methods getLocalHost or getByName. The second method returns a valid InetAddress object when given a string representing a hostname or IP address.

The cs parameter is the community string, a name that the agent and manager exchange to help identify one another. The string given is used as the community when sending the trap PDU.

The SNMPv3 method also takes an InetAddress, but does not use the community string. Only use the manager's IP address when creating an SNMPv3 trap group, or the contextName to define the scope of the requests sent.

Either one of these methods sends a trap to a single manager using a single community string. The InetAddressAcl trap group mechanism is better suited to sending traps to multiple managers, though it requires you to set up a trap group. Note that even if a trap group is in use, the two methods above only send one trap to the specified host address.