Task

Ordinary SNMP agents are monolithic. They implement managed objects of all services and components, which are processed by an agent from a SNMP manager, in a single program. This approach has the disadvantage that the management of a component must be supported by the agent's manufacturer, although the compenent's manufacturer obviously has a lot more knowledge about his device. Therefore the concept of sub-agents was developed: Every component's sub-agent registers his managed objects at the master agent. The master agent acts as a multiplexer for SNMP operations, which are eventually serviced by the component itself. A standard sub-agent protocol is AgentX.

This diploma thesis is to examine to what extent the concept of an AgentX sub-agent is suitable for management of kernel internal components (Network interfaces, routing tables, packet filter, etc.) inside the UNIX kernel.

For this the Linux Kernel shall be extended in basically two ways:

1. a basic AgentX sub-agent infrastructur which communicates with a master agent in user-space,
2. an extension of selected kernel parts with management functionality.

The NET-SNMP agent can be used as master agent.

The authorative task description can be found here. (In german)