Manpages

NAME

snmp_client, snmp_send_cb_f, snmp_timeout_cb_f, snmp_timeout_start_f, snmp_timeout_stop_f, snmp_open, snmp_close, snmp_pdu_create, snmp_add_binding, snmp_pdu_check, snmp_pdu_send, snmp_oid_append, snmp_receive, snmp_table_cb_f, snmp_table_fetch, snmp_table_fetch_async, snmp_dialog — SNMP client library

LIBRARY

Begemot SNMP library (libbsnmp, -lbsnmp)

SYNOPSIS

#include <asn1.h>
#include <snmp.h>
#include <snmpclient.h>

typedef void

(*snmp_send_cb_f)(struct snmp_pdu *req, struct snmp_pdu *resp, void *uarg);

typedef void

(*snmp_timeout_cb_f)(void *uarg);

typedef void *

(*snmp_timeout_start_f)(struct timeval *timeout, snmp_timeout_cb_f callback, void *uarg);

typedef void

(*snmp_timeout_stop_f)(void *timeout_id);

extern struct snmp_client snmp_client;

void

snmp_client_init(struct snmp_client *client);

int

snmp_client_set_host(struct snmp_client *client, const char *host);

int

snmp_client_set_port(struct snmp_client *client, const char *port);

int

snmp_open(const char *host, const char *port, const char *read_community, const char *write_community);

void

snmp_close(void);

void

snmp_pdu_create(struct snmp_pdu *pdu, u_int op);

int

snmp_add_binding(struct snmp_pdu *pdu, ...);

int

snmp_pdu_check(const struct snmp_pdu *req, const struct snmp_pdu *resp);

int32_t

snmp_pdu_send(struct snmp_pdu *pdu, snmp_send_cb_f func, void *uarg);

int

snmp_oid_append(struct asn_oid *oid, const char *fmt, ...);

int

snmp_receive(int blocking);

typedef void

(*snmp_table_cb_f)(void *list, void *arg, int res);

int

snmp_table_fetch(const struct snmp_table *descr, void *list);

int

snmp_table_fetch_async(const struct snmp_table *descr, void *list, snmp_table_cb_f callback, void *uarg);

int

snmp_dialog(struct snmp_pdu *req, struct snmp_pdu *resp);

DESCRIPTION

The SNMP library contains routines to easily build SNMP client applications that use SNMP versions 1 or 2. Most of the routines use a struct snmp_client:

struct snmp_client {

};

The fields of this structure are described below.

version

This is the version of SNMP to use. See bsnmplib(3) for applicable values. The default version is SNMP_V2c.

trans

If this is SNMP_TRANS_LOC_DGRAM a local datagram socket is used. If it is SNMP_TRANS_LOC_STREAM a local stream socket is used. For SNMP_TRANS_UDP a UDP socket is created. It uses the chost field as the path to the server’s socket for local sockets.

cport

The SNMP agent’s UDP port number. This may be a symbolic port number (from /etc/services or a numeric port number. If this field is NULL (the default) the standard SNMP port is used. This field should not be changed directly but rather by calling snmp_client_set_port().

chost

The SNMP agent’s host name, IP address or UNIX domain socket path name. If this is NULL (the default) localhost is assumed. This field should not be changed directly but rather through calling snmp_client_set_host().

read_community

This is the community name to be used for all requests except SET requests. The default is ’public’.

write_community

The community name to be used for SET requests. The default is ’private’.

timeout

The maximum time to wait for responses to requests. If the time elapses, the request is resent up to retries times. The default is 3 seconds.

retries

Number of times a request PDU is to be resent. If set to 0, the request is sent only once. The default is 3 retransmissions.

dump_pdus

If set to a non-zero value all received and sent PDUs are dumped via snmp_pdu_dump(3). The default is not to dump PDUs.

txbuflen

The encoding buffer size to be allocated for transmitted PDUs. The default is 10000 octets.

rxbuflen

The decoding buffer size to be allocated for received PDUs. This is the size of the maximum PDU that can be received. The default is 10000 octets.

fd

After calling snmp_open() this is the file socket file descriptor used for sending and receiving PDUs.

next_reqid

The request id of the next PDU to send. Used internal by the library.

max_reqid

The maximum request id to use for outging PDUs. The default is INT32_MAX.

min_reqid

The minimum request id to use for outgoing PDUs. Request ids are allocated linerily starting at min_reqid up to max_reqid.

error

If an error happens, this field is set to a printable string describing the error.

timeout_start

This field must point to a function setting up a one shot timeout. After the timeout has elapsed, the given callback function must be called with the user argument. The timeout_start() function must return a void * identifying the timeout.

timeout_stop

This field must be set to a function that stops a running timeout. The function will be called with the return value of the corresponding timeout_start() function.

local_path

If in local socket mode, the name of the clients socket. Not needed by the application.

In the current implementation there is a global variable

extern struct snmp_client snmp_client;

that is used by all the library functions. The first call into the library must be a call to snmp_client_init() to initialize this global variable to the default values. After this call and before calling snmp_open() the fields of the variable may be modified by the user. The modification of the chost and cport fields should be done only via the functions snmp_client_set_host() and snmp_client_set_port().

The function snmp_open() creates a UDP or UNIX domain socket and connects it to the agent’s IP address and port. If any of the arguments of the call is not NULL the corresponding field in the global snmp_client is set from the argument. Otherwise the values that are already in that variable are used. The function snmp_close() closes the socket, stops all timeouts and frees all dynamically allocated resources.

The next three functions are used to create request PDUs. The function snmp_pdu_create() initializes a PDU of type op. It does not allocate space for the PDU itself. This is the responsibility of the caller. snmp_add_binding() adds bindings to the PDU and returns the (zero based) index of the first new binding. The arguments are pairs of pointer to the OIDs and syntax constants, terminated by a NULL. The call

snmp_add_binding(&pdu,
&oid1, SNMP_SYNTAX_INTEGER,
&oid2, SNMP_SYNTAX_OCTETSTRING,
NULL);

adds two new bindings to the PDU and returns the index of the first one. It is the responsibility of the caller to set the value part of the binding if neccesary. The functions returns -1 if the maximum number of bindings is exhausted. The function snmp_oid_append() can be used to construct variable OIDs for requests. It takes a pointer to an struct asn_oid that is to be constructed, a format string, and a number of arguments the type of which depends on the format string. The format string is interpreted character by character in the following way:

i

This format expects an argument of type asn_subid_t and appends this as a single integer to the OID.

a

This format expects an argument of type struct in_addr and appends to four parts of the IP address to the OID.

s

This format expects an argument of type const char * and appends the length of the string (as computed by strlen(3)) and each of the characters in the string to the OID.

(N)

This format expects no argument. N must be a decimal number and is stored into an internal variable size.

b

This format expects an argument of type const char * and appends size characters from the string to the OID. The string may contain NUL characters.

c

This format expects two arguments: one of type size_t and one of type const u_char *. The first argument gives the number of bytes to append to the OID from the string pointed to by the second argument.

The function snmp_pdu_check() may be used to check a response PDU. A number of checks are performed (error code, equal number of bindings, syntaxes and values for SET PDUs). The function returns +1 if everything is ok, 0 if a NOSUCHNAME or similar error was detected, -1 if the response PDU had fatal errors and -2 if resp is NULL (a timeout occured).

The function snmp_pdu_send() encodes and sends the given PDU. It records the PDU together with the callback and user pointers in an internal list and arranges for retransmission if no response is received. When a response is received or the retransmission count is exceeded the callback func is called with the orignal request PDU, the response PDU and the user argument uarg. If the retransmit count is exceeded, func is called with the original request PDU, the reponse pointer set to NULL and the user argument uarg. The caller should not free the request PDU until the callback function is called. The callback function must free the request PDU and the response PDU (if not NULL ).

The function snmp_receive() tries to receive a PDU. If the argument is zero, the function polls to see whether a packet is available, if the argument is non-zero, the function blocks until the next packet is received. The packet is delivered via the usual callback mechanism (non-response packets are silently dropped). The function returns 0, if a packet was received and successfully dispatched, -1 if an error occured or no packet was available (in polling mode).

The next two functions are used to retrieve tables from SNMP agents. The use the following input structure, that describes the table:

struct snmp_table {

};

The fields of this structure have the following meaning:

table

This is the base OID of the table.

last_change

Some tables have a scalar variable of type TIMETICKS attached to them, that holds the time when the table was last changed. This OID should be the OID of this variable (without the .0 index). When the table is retrieved with multiple GET requests, and the variable changes between two request, the table fetch is restarted.

max_iter

Maximum number of tries to fetch the table.

entry_size

The table fetching routines return a list of structure one for each table row. This variable is the size of one structure and used to malloc(3) the structure.

index_size

This is the number of index columns in the table.

req_mask

This is a bit mask with a 1 for each table column that is required. Bit 0 corresponds to the first element (index 0) in the array entries, bit 1 to the second (index 1) and so on. SNMP tables may be sparse. For sparse columns the bit should not be set. If the bit for a given column is set and the column value cannot be retrieved for a given row, the table fetch is restarted assuming that the table is currently beeing modified by the agent. The bits for the index columns are ignored.

entries

This is a variable sized array of column descriptors. This array is terminated by an element with syntax SNMP_SYNTAX_NULL. The first index_size elements describe all the index columns of the table, the rest are normal columns. If for a the column at ’entries[N]’ the expression ’req_mask & (1 << N)’ yields true, the column is considered a required column. The fields of this the array elements have the following meaning:

subid

This is the OID subid of the column. This is ignored for index entries. Index entries are decoded according to the syntax field.

syntax

This is the syntax of the column or index. A syntax of SNMP_SYNTAX_NULL terminates the array.

offset

This is the starting offset of the value of the column in the return structures. This field can be set with the ISO-C offsetof() macro.

Both table fetching functions return TAILQ (see queue(3)) of structures--one for each table row. These structures must start with a TAILQ_ENTRY() and a u_int64_t and are allocated via malloc(3). The list argument of the table functions must point to a TAILQ_HEAD(). The u_int64_t fields, usually called found is used to indicate which of the columns have been found for the given row. It is encoded like the req_mask field.

The function snmp_table_fetch() synchronuosly fetches the given table. If everything is ok 0 is returned. Otherwise the function returns -1 and sets an appropriate error string. The function snmp_table_fetch_async() fetches the tables asynchronuosly. If either the entire table is fetch, or an error occures the callback function callback is called with the callers arguments list and uarg and a parameter that is either 0 if the table was fetched, or -1 if there was an error. The function itself returns -1 if it could not initialize fetching of the table.

The following table description is used to fetch the ATM interface table:

/*
* ATM interface table
*/
struct atmif {

};
TAILQ_HEAD(atmif_list, atmif);

/* list of all ATM interfaces */
struct atmif_list atmif_list;

static const struct snmp_table atmif_table = {

{ 0, SNMP_SYNTAX_NULL, 0 }

};

...

...

The function snmp_dialog() is used to execute a synchonuous dialog with the agent. The request PDU req is sent and the function blocks until the response PDU is received. Note, that asynchonuous receives are handled (i.e. callback functions of other send calls or table fetches may be called while in the function). The response PDU is returned in resp. If no reponse could be received after all timeouts and retries, the function returns -1. If a response was received 0 is returned.

DIAGNOSTICS

If an error occures in any of the function an error indication as described above is returned. Additionally the function sets a printable error string in the error filed of snmp_client.

SEE ALSO

snmpd(1), gensnmptree(1), bsnmplib(3) bsnmpagent(3)

STANDARDS

This implementation conforms to the applicable IETF RFCs and ITU-T recommendations.

AUTHORS

Hartmut Brandt <harti [AT] freebsd.org>
Kendy Kutzner <kutzner [AT] fokus.de>

BSD August 15, 2002 BSD