System information

Q. What does SNMP Simple do ?
A. SNMP Simple is a set of Perl 5 modules that perform SNMP access requests. They written by Simon
Leinen [e-mail]. Check his website
for full information. The SNMP Simple package contains Perl 5
modules SNMP_Session.pm and BER.pm, which, when used together, provide rudimentary access to remote
SNMP (v1/v2) agent.
This module differs from existing SNMP packages in that it is completely stand-alone, i.e. you don't need to
have another SNMP package such as NET-SNMP (as other monitoring packages do). It is also written entirely
in Perl, so you don't have to compile any C modules (very handy and easy to use). It uses the Perl 5
Socket.pm module and should therefore be very portable, even to non-Unix systems (so therefore works on a
unusual platforms like Amiga, Alpha and even Microsoft Windows ).
The SNMP operations currently supported are "get", "get-next", "get-bulk" and "set", as well as trap generation
and reception. NMIS doesn't use the trap features at this time.
Q. What does RRDtool do ?
A. RRDtool refers to Round Robin Database tool. Round robin is a technique that works with a fixed amount of
data, and a pointer to the current element. Think of a circle with some dots plotted on the edge, these dots are
the places where data can be stored. Draw an arrow from the center of the circle to one of the dots, this is the
pointer. When the current data is read or written, the pointer moves to the next element. As we are on a circle
there is no beginning nor an end, you can go on and on. After a while, all the available places will be used and
the process automatically reuses old locations. This way, the database will not grow in size and therefore
requires no maintenance. RRDtool works with with Round Robin Databases (RRDs). It stores and retrieves
data from them.
NMIS uses RRDtool as the database for SNMP information and the graphing tool. Since NMIS does all of the
requests to and from RRDtool, the average NMIS user has little or no interaction with RRDtool.
Q. Does NMIS work on Microsoft Windows (any version)?
A. You aren't going to like this. The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, but.....
NMIS uses the Perl language and an Open Source Perl distribution is available from ActiveState
. However,
NMIS uses a couple of modules to provide Time to the program flow and these do so at very high resolution.
From what we (those good people on the mailing list) can tell it seems that these modules are Unix/Linux
specific. Its seems that everyone uses a Unix/Linux variant at this time (usually Red Hat or Debian although
Keith wrote NMIS on Solaris i386) so no-one has gotten around to fixing the problem. Some people have
reported problems with RRDtool on Microsoft platforms also but this is unconfirmed.
A couple of other points. One.The general consensus is that this program is well suited to Linux/Unix
environment and you are broadly encouraged to do so as well. Two. Since very few people, or perhaps
no-one, is using Microsoft Windows then support is going to be a bit limited. Three
. It would be great if you
can get it working on Microsoft Windows and let us know. Then we can get a more people using NMIS and
develop the software even further than it is now.
NMIS - Network Management Information System http://www.sins.com.au/nmis/
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