supporting multiple versions of vendor mibs

John P. Rouillard (rouilj@dstar.iddis.com)
Thu, 05 Jan 1995 15:04:28 -0500

Does anybody have any ideas about how to support multiple versions of
vendors mibs? I have the cisco mibs that came with scotty, and I also
have the cisco revision 9.1 mibs (that have new values etc) that I
want to support.

I figured that it would be as simple as moving the cisco_9.1.mib file
to the installed directory and adding the appropriate line to the
init.tcl file and restarting the mib browser. That appears not to be
sufficient however. I also changed the line:


cisco OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { enterprises 9 }

to read

cisco_9.1 OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { enterprises 9 }

figuring that this is really what determines the name of the mib in
the enterprises menu. Now I get a copy of the mib listed in the
browser, but selecting the button does nothing.

Also I discovered a few bugs/undocumented features in the mib
parsing. Cisco likes to use:

flashToNetStatus OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX INTEGER {
flashOpInProgress(1),
flashOpSuccess(2)
flashOpFailure(3)
flashReadOnly(4)
flashOpenFailure(5)
bufferAllocationFailure(6)

for enumberation. The parser gives warnings that the enumeration was
unparsable. I thought that a , or newline delimited list was allowed
for enumerations. When I explicitly put ,'s after each element there
were no warnings.

Also, cisco likes the following:

CISCO-MIB { iso org(3) dod(6) internet(1) private(4)
enterprises(1) 9 }

DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN

IMPORTS

and the mib compiler reports that { is a reserved word. Also cisco
likes putting page boundaries in like:

bufferHgSize OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX INTEGER
ACCESS read-only





-- cisco MIB [Page 14]
--@^L





-- Request for Comments: Draft cisco Systems, Inc.


STATUS mandatory
DESCRIPTION
"Contains the size of huge buffers."

which the mib compiler complains about. The full mib I am using is:

ftp://ftp.cisco.com/pub/mibs/mib.txt91

Getting support for multiple mib version will become even more
important when I am running version 10 software on my ciscos since
they have done away with the monolithic cisco mib, and broken it up
into smaller functional groups.

-- John
John Rouillard

Senior Systems Administrator IDD Information Services
rouilj@dstar.iddis.com Waltham, MA (617) 890-1576 x103

Senior Systems Consultant (SERL Project) University of Massachusetts at Boston
rouilj@cs.umb.edu (preferred) Boston, MA, (617) 287-6480
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