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SNMP_CONFIG(5)                                    Net-SNMP                                    SNMP_CONFIG(5)



NAME
       snmp_config - handling of Net-SNMP configuration files

DESCRIPTION
       The  Net-SNMP  package  uses  various configuration files to configure its applications.  This manual
       page merely describes the overall nature of them, so that the other manual pages don't have to.

DIRECTORIES SEARCHED
       First off, there are numerous places that configuration  files  can  be  found  and  read  from.   By
       default,  the  applications  look  for  configuration files in the following 4 directories, in order:
       /etc/snmp, /usr/share/snmp, /usr/lib/snmp, and $HOME/.snmp.  In each of these directories,  it  looks
       for  files  with  the  extension of both conf and local.conf (reading the second ones last).  In this
       manner, there are 8 default places a configuration file can exist for any  given  configuration  file
       type.

       Additionally,  the  above  default  search path can be overridden by setting the environment variable
       SNMPCONFPATH to a colon-separated list of directories to search for.  The  path  for  the  persistent
       data should be included when running applications that use persistent storage, such as snmpd.

       Applications will read persistent configuration files in the following order of preference:

              file in SNMP_PERSISTENT_FILE environment variable

              directories in SNMPCONFPATH environment variable

              directory defined by persistentDir snmp.conf variable

              directory in SNMP_PERSISTENT_DIR environment variable

              default /var/db/net-snmp directory

       Finally, applications will write persistent configuration files in the following order of preference:

              file in SNMP_PERSISTENT_FILE environment variable

              directory defined by persistentDir snmp.conf variable

              directory in SNMP_PERSISTENT_DIR environment variable

              default /var/db/net-snmp directory

       Note:  When using SNMP_PERSISTENT_FILE, the filename should match the application name.  For example,
       /var/net-snmp/snmpd.conf.

CONFIGURATION FILE TYPES
       Each application may use multiple configuration files, which will configure various different aspects
       of the application.  For instance, the SNMP agent  (snmpd)  knows  how  to  understand  configuration
       directives in both the snmpd.conf and the snmp.conf files.  In fact, most applications understand how
       to read the contents of the snmp.conf files.  Note, however, that configuration directives understood
       in one file may not be understood in another file.  For further information, read the associated man-ual manual
       ual page with each configuration file type.  Also, most of the applications support a  -H  switch  on
       the  command  line that will list the configuration files it will look for and the directives in each
       one that it understands.

       The snmp.conf configuration file is intended to be a application suite wide configuration  file  that
       supports  directives that are useful for controlling the fundamental nature of all of the SNMP appli-cations, applications,
       cations, such as how they all manipulate and parse the textual SNMP MIB files.

SWITCHING CONFIGURATION TYPES IN MID-FILE
       It's possible to switch in mid-file the configuration type that the parser is supposed to be reading.
       Since that sentence doesn't make much sense, lets give you an example: say that you wanted to turn on
       packet dumping output for the agent by default, but you didn't want to do that for the  rest  of  the
       applications  (ie,  snmpget,  snmpwalk, ...).  Normally to enable packet dumping in the configuration
       file you'd need to put a line like:

              dumpPacket true

       into the snmp.conf file.  But, this would turn it on for all of the applications.  So,  instead,  you
       can  put  the same line in the snmpd.conf file so that it only applies to the snmpd daemon.  However,
       you need to tell the parser to expect this line.  You do this by putting a special type specification
       token inside a [] set.  In other words, inside your snmpd.conf file you could put the above snmp.conf
       directive by adding a line like so:

              [snmp] dumpPacket true

       This tells the parser to parse the above line as if it were inside a snmp.conf  file  instead  of  an
       snmpd.conf  file.   If  you want to parse a bunch of lines rather than just one then you can make the
       context switch apply to the remainder of the file or until  the  next  context  switch  directive  by
       putting the special token on a line by itself:

              # make this file handle snmp.conf tokens:
              [snmp]
              dumpPacket true
              logTimestamp true
              # return to our original snmpd.conf tokens:
              [snmpd]
              rocommunity mypublic

COMMENTS
       Any  lines  beginning  with the character '#' in the configuration files are treated as a comment and
       are not parsed.

API INTERFACE
       Information about writing C code that makes use of this system in either the agent's MIB  modules  or
       in applications can be found in the read_config(3) manual page.

SEE ALSO
       snmpconf(1), read_config(3), snmp.conf(5), snmpd.conf(5)



4th Berkeley Distribution                        5 May 2005                                   SNMP_CONFIG(5)