Monitoring NAS with Third-Party Tools

This chapter describes how to monitor Netscape Application Server using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

• About SNMP
• Working with the Master Agent and Subagent
• About the Management Information Base (MIB)

1. Log in as root.
2. Check to see if there is a Solaris SNMP daemon (snmpd) running on port 161.

If an SNMP daemon is running, make sure you know how to restart it and which MIB trees it supports. Then kill its process.

3. Edit the Solaris SNMP daemon start-up file s76snmpdx in /etc/rc3.d to modify the port to which the daemon listens.

In the start section, replace the line

/etc/rc3.d

with

/etc/rc3.d

4. Edit the CONFIG file located in server4/nas/snmp in the server root directory.

The CONFIG file defines the community and the manager that the master agent will work with. The manager value should be a valid system name or an IP address. The following is an example of a basic CONFIG file:

COMMUNITY	public ALLOW ALL OPERATIONS
MANAGER	your_manager_station_name SEND ALL TRAPS TO PORT 162 WITH COMMUNITY public

5. (Optional) Define sysContact and SysLocation variables in the CONFIG file.

You can edit the CONFIG file to add initial values for sysContact and sysLocation which specify the sysContact and sysLocation MIB-II variables. Note that the strings for sysContact and sysLocation in this example are enclosed in quotes. Any string that contains spaces, line breaks, tabs, and so on must be in quotes. You can also specify the value in hexadecimal notation.

In this sample CONFIG file, sysContract and sysLocation variables are defined:

COMMUNITY	public ALLOW ALL OPERATIONS
MANAGER	nms2 SEND ALL TRAPS TO PORT 162 WITH COMMUNITY public
INITIAL	sysLocation "Server room 501 East Middlefield Road Mountain View, CA 94043 USA"
INITIAL	sysContact "John Doe email: <jdoe@netscape.com>"

1. Edit the file CONFIG_SAGT, modifying the following lines:

sysLocation

This configures the subagent to serve the Solaris agent on port 1161.

sysLocation

This configures the SNMP subtrees served by the Solaris agent.

sysLocation

This ensures that all traps sent by the Solaris agent are forwarded to the master agent.

# magt CONFIG INIT& 

1. Edit the files nas/snmp/k75snmpmagt and nas/snmp/s75snmpmagt.
2. Change $GX_ROOTDIR to the NAS installation directory path if this variable is not yet defined in the root's environment.
3. Copy k75snmpmagt in /etc/rc2.d and s75snmpmagt in /etc/rc3.d.

• Method 1: In the CONFIG file, specify a transport mapping for each interface over which the master agent listens for SNMP requests from managers. Transport mappings allow the master agent to accept connections at the standard port and at a nonstandard port. The master agent can also accept SNMP traffic at a nonstandard port. The maximum number of concurrent SNMP is limited by your target system's limits on the number of open sockets or file descriptors per process. The following is an example of a transport mapping entry:

TRANSPORT

extraordinary SNMP OVER UDP SOCKET AT PORT 11161

# magt CONFIG INIT& 

• Method two: Edit the /etc/services file to allow the master agent to accept connections at the standard port as well as at a nonstandard port.

NAS install directory/mail-instanceName/log/default

1. Check the Enable Statistics Collection box.

If you remove the check, the subagent cannot be enabled.

2. Restart the subagent by clicking the Start button.

NAS install directory\plugins\snmp\

nasKesMaxThread    OBJECT-TYPE     / object type

ACCESS read-write / read/write access level

STATUS mandatory / status

DESCRIPTION / description

"The maximum number of threads used to serve requests."

::= { kes 4 } / object identifier

This definition contains the following information:

• Object Type: gives the name of the variable, in this case, nasKesMaxThread.
• Syntax: gives the abstract data type of the variable object type in ASN.1 notation. For example, the Syntax of the nasKesMaxThread variable is INTEGER (SIZE (1..512)).
• Access: gives the read/write access level to the variable. Possible access levels are read-only, read-write, write-only, or not-accessible.
• Status: tells whether the element is mandatory, optional, or obsolete.
• Description: text description of the element, enclosed in quotes. For example, the description of the nasKesMaxThread variable is "The maximum number of threads used to serve requests."
• Object Identifier: assigned name that serves as a permanent identifier for each managed object in the MIB name tree in its name space. Objects in SNMP are hierarchical; the object identifier is a sequence of labels that represents the object in the hierarchy. For example, nasKesMaxThread is identified as kes 4. This means that it has the label 4 in the subtree kes. kes, in turn, has the label 4 in the kesTable subtree.