snmpd(8) Net-SNMP snmpd(8)
NAME
snmpd - daemon to respond to SNMP request packets.
SYNOPSIS
snmpd [OPTIONS] [LISTENING ADDRESSES]
DESCRIPTION
snmpd is an SNMP agent which binds to a port and awaits requests from
SNMP management software. Upon receiving a request, it processes the
request(s), collects the requested information and/or performs the
requested operation(s) and returns the information to the sender.
OPTIONS
-a Log the source addresses of incoming requests.
-A Append to the log file rather than truncating it.
-c FILE Read FILE as a configuration file (or a comma-separated list of
configuration files). Note that the loaded file will only
understand snmpd.conf tokens, unless the configuration type is
specified in the file as described in the snmp_config man page
under SWITCHING CONFIGURATION TYPES IN MID-FILE.
-C Do not read any configuration files except the ones optionally
specified by the -c option. Note that this behaviour also cov-
ers the persistent configuration files. This may result in
dynamically-assigned values being reset following an agent
restart, unless the relevant persistent config files are
explicitly loaded using the -c option.
-d Dump (in hexadecimal) the sent and received SNMP packets.
-D[TOKEN[,...]]
Turn on debugging output for the given TOKEN(s). Without any
tokens specified, it defaults to printing all the tokens (which
is equivalent to the keyword "ALL"). You might want to try ALL
for extremely verbose output. Note: You can not put a space
between the -D flag and the listed TOKENs.
-f Do not fork() from the calling shell.
-g GID Change the group ID of the snmpd process into GID after opening
listening sockets. This overrides the agentgroup configuration
file parameter.
-h, --help
Display a brief usage message and then exit.
-H Display a list of configuration file directives understood by
the agent and then exit.
-I [-]INITLIST
Specifies which modules should (or should not) be initialized
when the agent starts up. If the comma-separated INITLIST is
preceded with a '-', it is the list of modules that should not
be started. Otherwise this is the list of the only modules
that should be started.
To get a list of compiled modules, run the agent with the argu-
ments -Dmib_init -H (assuming debugging support has been com-
piled in).
-L[eEfFoOsSnN]
Specify where logging output should be directed (standard error
or output, to a file or via syslog). See LOGGING OPTIONS in
snmpcmd(1) for details.
-m MIBLIST
Specifies a colon separated list of MIB modules to load for
this application. This overrides the environment variable
MIBS. See snmpcmd(1) for details.
-M DIRLIST
Specifies a colon separated list of directories to search for
MIBs. This overrides the environment variable MIBDIRS. See
snmpcmd(1) for details.
-n NAME Set an alternative application name (which will affect the con-
figuration files loaded). By default this will be snmpd,
regardless of the name of the actual binary.
-p FILE Save the process ID of the daemon in FILE.
-q Print simpler output for easier automated parsing.
-r Do not require root access to run the daemon. Specifically, do
not exit if files only accessible to root (such as /dev/kmem
etc.) cannot be opened.
-u UID Change the user ID of the snmpd process into UID (which can be
given in numerical or textual form) after opening listening
sockets. This overrides the agentuser configuration file param-
eter.
-U Instructs the agent to not remove its pid file (see the -p
option) on shutdown. Overrides the leave_pidfile token in the
snmpd.conf file, see snmpd.conf(5).
-v, --version
Print version information for the agent and then exit.
-V Symbolically dump SNMP transactions.
-x ADDRESS
Listens for AgentX connections on the specified address rather
than the default AGENTX_SOCKET. The address can either be a
Unix domain socket path, or the address of a network interface.
The format is the same as the format of listening addresses
described below.
-X Run as an AgentX subagent rather than as an SNMP master agent.
--name="value"
Allows one to specify any token ("name") supported in the
snmpd.conf file and sets its value to "value". Overrides the
corresponding token in the snmpd.conf file. See snmpd.conf(5)
for the full list of tokens.
LISTENING ADDRESSES
By default, snmpd listens for incoming SNMP requests on UDP port 161 on
all IPv4 interfaces. However, it is possible to modify this behaviour
by specifying one or more listening addresses as arguments to snmpd. A
listening address takes the form:
[<transport-specifier>:]<transport-address>
At its simplest, a listening address may consist only of a port number,
in which case snmpd listens on that UDP port on all IPv4 interfaces.
Otherwise, the <transport-address> part of the specification is parsed
according to the following table:
<transport-specifier> <transport-address> format
udp (default) hostname[:port] or IPv4-address[:port]
tcp hostname[:port] or IPv4-address[:port]
unix pathname
ipx [network]:node[/port]
aal5pvc or pvc [interface.][VPI.]VCI
udp6 or udpv6 or udpipv6 hostname[:port] or IPv6-address[:port]
tcp6 or tcpv6 or tcpipv6 hostname[:port] or IPv6-address[:port]
ssh hostname:port
dtlsudp hostname:port
Note that <transport-specifier> strings are case-insensitive so that,
for example, "tcp" and "TCP" are equivalent. Here are some examples,
along with their interpretation:
127.0.0.1:161 listen on UDP port 161, but only on the loop-
back interface. This prevents snmpd being
queried remotely. The port specification
":161" is not strictly necessary since that is
the default SNMP port.
TCP:1161 listen on TCP port 1161 on all IPv4 interfaces.
ipx:/40000 listen on IPX port 40000 on all IPX interfaces.
unix:/tmp/local-agent listen on the Unix domain socket
/tmp/local-agent.
/tmp/local-agent is identical to the previous specification,
since the Unix domain is assumed if the first
character of the <transport-address> is '/'.
PVC:161 listen on the AAL5 permanent virtual circuit
with VPI=0 and VCI=161 (decimal) on the first
ATM adapter in the machine.
udp6:10161 listen on port 10161 on all IPv6 interfaces.
ssh:127.0.0.1:22 Allows connections from the snmp subsystem on
the ssh server on port 22. The details of
using SNMP over SSH are defined below.
dtlsudp:127.0.0.1:9161 Listen for connections over DTLS on UDP port
9161. The snmp.conf file must have the
serverCert, configuration tokens defined.
Note that not all the transport domains listed above will always be
available; for instance, hosts with no IPv6 support will not be able to
use udp6 transport addresses, and attempts to do so will result in the
error "Error opening specified endpoint". Likewise, since AAL5 PVC
support is only currently available on Linux, it will fail with the
same error on other platforms.
Transport Specific Notes
ssh The SSH transport, on the server side, is actually just a unix
named pipe that can be connected to via a ssh subsystem config-
ured in the main ssh server. The pipe location (configurable
with the sshtosnmpsocket token in snmp.conf) is
/var/net-snmp/sshtosnmp. Packets should be submitted to it via
the sshtosnmp application, which also sends the user ID as well
when starting the connection. The TSM security model should be
used when packets should process it.
The sshtosnmp command knows how to connect to this pipe and
talk to it. It should be configured in the OpenSSH sshd con-
figuration file (which is normally /etc/ssh/sshd_config using
the following configuration line:
Subsystem snmp /usr/local/bin/sshtosnmp
The sshtosnmp command will need read/write access to the
/var/net-snmp/sshtosnmp pipe. Although it should be fairly
safe to grant access to the average user since it still
requires modifications to the ACM settings before the user can
perform operations, paranoid administrators may want to make
the /var/net-snmp directory accessible only by users in a par-
ticular group. Use the sshtosnmpsocketperms snmp.conf config-
ure option to set the permissions, owner and group of the cre-
ated socket.
Access control can be granted to the user "foo" using the fol-
lowing style of simple snmpd.conf settings:
rouser -s tsm foo authpriv
Note that "authpriv" is acceptable assuming as SSH protects
everything that way (assuming you have a non-insane setup).
snmpd has no notion of how SSH has actually protected a packet
and thus the snmp agent assumes all packets passed through the
SSH transport have been protected at the authpriv level.
dtlsudp The DTLS protocol, which is based off of TLS, requires both
client and server certificates to establish the connection and
authenticate both sides. In order to do this, the client will
need to configure the snmp.conf file with the clientCert con-
figuration tokens. The server will need to configure the
snmp.conf file with the serverCert configuration tokens
defined.
Access control setup is similar to the ssh transport as the TSM
security model should be used to protect the packet.
CONFIGURATION FILES
snmpd checks for the existence of and parses the following files:
/opt/local/etc/snmp/snmp.conf
Common configuration for the agent and applications. See
snmp.conf(5) for details.
/opt/local/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
/opt/local/etc/snmp/snmpd.local.conf
Agent-specific configuration. See snmpd.conf(5) for details.
These files are optional and may be used to configure access con-
trol, trap generation, subagent protocols and much else besides.
In addition to these two configuration files in
/opt/local/etc/snmp, the agent will read any files with the names
snmpd.conf and snmpd.local.conf in a colon separated path speci-
fied in the SNMPCONFPATH environment variable.
/opt/local/share/snmp/mibs/
The agent will also load all files in this directory as MIBs. It
will not, however, load any file that begins with a '.' or
descend into subdirectories.
SEE ALSO
(in recommended reading order)
snmp_config(5), snmp.conf(5), snmpd.conf(5)
V5.9 30 Jun 2010 snmpd(8)
net-snmp 5.9 - Generated Mon Jan 4 08:27:26 CST 2021