Introduction

The SNMP agent that ships with AIX releases 5.x and 6L provides some very useful data, but some work is required on 5.x to make this data available for OpenNMS to collect. This article outlines the necessary changes. NOTE: These instructions are for Version 1 of the snmpd daemon. DO NOT use for if you are running the Version 3 daemon.

Configuring OpenNMS

No work is necessary as data collection definitions for CPU, process count, subsystem and subserver counts,volume groups, physical volumes, paging spaces, filesystems, and print queues are present in OpenNMS 1.6.1 and later. Because of known problems with the AIX SNMP agent, collection of statistics on physical volumes and print queues is disabled by default. Collection of the enabled statistics will occur automatically for all AIX systems from which the statistics are available and accessible. Graph definitions are present for all the collected statistics.

Configuring AIX

AIX 6L systems should be configured by default so that these statistics are available to all SNMP managers that have read access. AIX 5.x takes some work.

After extensive work with AIX Technical support for 3 months we have finally solved the great mystery of what needs to be done in order for all the data in the AIX-specific MIBs to be collected by OpenNMS. Here are the changes to snmp.conf on the AIX host that MUST be done in order for this to work with AIX 5.x:

Confirm you are using the Version 1 deamon

 ls -l /usr/sbin/snmpd should respond with
 ... /usr/sbin/snmpd -> snmpdv1

 if it responds with
 ... /usr/sbin/snmpd -> snmpdv3ne
 DO NOT use these instructions

 **To switch to the Version 1 daemon**
  /usr/sbin/snmpv3_ssw -1 

Changes in /etc/snmpd.conf

logging file=/usr/tmp/snmpd.log enabled 
logging size=10000000 level=1

community [community name] [OpenNMS host]
community [community name] 127.0.0.1

view 1.17.2

trap [community name] [OpenNMS host] 1.17.2 fe

#snmpd maxpacket=1024 querytimeout=120 smuxtimeout=60

smux 1.3.6.1.4.1.2.3.1.2.1.2 gated_password # gated
smux 1.3.6.1.4.1.2.3.1.2.2.1.1.2 dpid_password #dpid

Command Sequence to Restart SNMP Subsystem

stopsrc -s snmpd
stopsrc -s dpid2
stopsrc -s hostmibd
stopsrc -s aixmibd

# (Clear all the logs)
rm -i /var/tmp/*.log*

startsrc -s snmpd && sleep 60

# (Wait about a minute after snmpd is started then start dpid2)

startsrc -s dpid2 -a "-d 128" && sleep 60

# (Wait about a minute after dpid2 is started then start hostmibd and aixmibd)

startsrc -s hostmibd -a "-c [community name] -d 128"
startsrc -s aixmibd -a "-c [community name] -d 128"

NOTE: Once all debuggin is finished, remove the -d 128 option or you will fill up the log filesystem very quickly.