Hi, I have written a couple of probes that would greatly benefit from more powerful table manipulation. For example, my Novell NetWare volume monitoring probe needs to use the volume index number to look up the volume information, instead of being able to use the name of the volume. The problem is that there's no easy way to figure out the index (without either looking it up with an SNMP browser, or trying index numbers until you get the right one), and also sometimes the index number of a volume will change when you add, delete or mount/dismount a volume.
Here's my suggestion: The probe would have a field for entering the volume name. Then the probe would iterate over the appropriate table until it finds the name. If it can't find the name, there should be an error mechanism that the probe can use to set an alarm state. Once it finds the name it uses this to figure out the index number. And then the rest of the probe continues as before. The MIB I'm referring to is in NWSERVER.MIB, and the OID to the table is .1.3.6.1.4.1.23.2.28.2.14.1. This MIB file can be found on your NetWare server in sys\system\nma\mibs, and in lots of other places on the Web. Try Google or http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/2971008.htm . The probe I'm referring to is on the probe download page ( http://www.intermapper.com/contrib/customprobes.html ). Note that most of the probes I have posted there would benefit from the ability to look up an index number from a name. There's another class of OID lookups that sometimes come in handy. That's where you take some information and perform calculations on it to generate an OID string. For example, some switches have a MIB that lets you look up what port a given MAC address is attached to in one step. You take the MAC address, convert the six hex bytes into six dotted decimals, and tack that onto the end of an OID. There are other examples where you take an ASCII string or an IP address and do the same thing. You might be able to add a function or three that can convert data into OID-formatted strings. Or, you could provide access to a scripting language like Perl from inside a probe file, which would give us the ability to do almost anything. Let me know if you want specific examples of this calculated-OID technique. Later, Doug -- Doug Weathers Information Technology Network Administrator Cascade Healthcare Community 2500 NE Neff Road Bend, OR 97701 http://www.scmc.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Desk: 541-383-6846 Cell: 541-480-0919 >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4/20/2005 6:25:52 AM >>> Folks: --- Steve Foster wrote: One for the developers, custom probe writers..... Are there any plans to permit tables in custom probes? For example like the storage status within the host resources probe. Has anyone got any reccomendations for how to implament a probe that would extract useful information out of a table, where the the table is ordered differently between hosts. --- end of quote --- Yes, we're beginning to think seriously about tables in probes. We have some general ideas about how to go about it, but it would help us enormously to get a sense of what it would mean to have a custom SNMP probe facility that "handles tables". Specifically, we are looking for examples of equipment that stores data in tables, and how you'd like InterMapper to retrieve/compare/display that information. If you've ever thought about making a probe that processed tables, please tell us: - What equipment was involved? What tables and what fields of those tables are interesting? - Should InterMapper process all the rows of the table identically? - If not, how would InterMapper "know" which rows to process? - Do you ever need to relate data from one table with data in another table? - Are there cases where you'd want to use data from one device to retrieve a value from another device? - What computations/calculations/comparisons would you expect the probe to perform? - Are there additional built-in functions that would help to create the probe? - How should the tabular data be formatted in the status window? - What other facilities would you want to see? We would be pleased to hear your thoughts. It would be great if you can specify certain equipment/MIB/OIDs/etc. that you're familiar with. It would also be useful to know about the "competition" - any other tools/programs that offer a good way to do these things. Many thanks! Rich Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dartware, LLC http://www.dartware.com 10 Buck Road, PO Box 130 Telephone: 603-643-2268 Hanover, NH 03755-0130 USA Fax: 603-643-2289 ____________________________________________________________________ List archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/intermapper-talk%40list.dartware.com/ To unsubscribe: send email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ____________________________________________________________________ List archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/intermapper-talk%40list.dartware.com/ To unsubscribe: send email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
