Tag: snmp

Querying Cisco MST Port Roles via SNMP with OSS_SNMP

OSS_SNMP is a PHP SNMP library written by myself for people who hate SNMP. After a customer migration from PVST to MST (Multiple Spanning Tree), I have added a number of MST functions / MIBs to OSS_SNMP:

During a fairly significant network migration involving breaking / connecting a number of links, I wanted to be able to monitor the MST port role of significant ports at a glance. For this purpose, I wrote the mst-port-roles.php script and have committed it as an example to OSS_SNMP. First, here is what it looks like when run on the command line (with hostnames obfuscated):

MST Port RolesFrom a very simple array of port details at the top of the script, it will poll all switches and for each port print:

  • device and port name;
  • port state and speed;
  • port role for each applicable MST instance.

I run it on bash and use bash colouring. The script is well documented and can easily be repurposed for other networks. You’ll find the source here.

Translating SNMP OIDs Using MIB Files

I get caught trying to remember this a lot and there’s a really useful tutorial on this at the Net-SNMP website: Using and loading MIBS.

If you’re using Ubuntu, also consider checking the comments in /etc/snmp/snmp.conf which (in 13.04) contains:

As the snmp packages come without MIB files due to license reasons, loading of MIBs is disabled by default. If you added the MIBs you can reenable loading them by commenting out the following line.

Also, run the following:

apt-get install snmp-mibs-downloader

which will download some basic MIBs as part of the installation.

NOCtools and OSS_SNMP Get Support for Multiple Spanning Tree (MST) Protocol

NOCtools (a mixed bag collection of tools and utilities for NOC engineers) and OSS_SNMP (a PHP SNMP Library for People Who HATE SNMP, MIBs and OIDs) have just gotten support for Multiple Spanning Tree.

Specifically, OSS_SNMP has two new MIBS (Cisco’s original MST tree which has a lot of deprecated nodes – MIBS\Cisco\MST; and the newer IEEE tree – MIBS\Cisco\SMST). With these, we can, for example, get an array of [instanceID] => instanceName values from a switch by just coding:

$ciscosw = new \OSS_SNMP\SNMP( $ip, $community );
print_r( $ciscosw->useCisco_SMST()->instances() );

NOCtools has the more impressive use cases of these new features. Specifically (and just likes its RSTP/pvrspt functionality), it can:

  • Show MST port roles (root, designated, alternate, etc) for a given (or all) MST instance(s) – this is equivalent to the RSTP version;
  • From a given device, it can crawl all CDP neighbours and create a graph of all devices, their connecting ports and the MST roles of those ports. This is a really useful feature as it means you don’t need to log into multiple switches to get a handle on what links are blocking. See documentation and a sample diagram here.

NOCtools – A Mixed Bag of Tools and Utilities for NOC Engineers

NOCtools is a mixed bag of tools and utilities that are useful for NOC engineers. This project originally started out as a way to highlight and utilise our OSS_SNMP library (a PHP SNMP library for people who hate SNMP).

It since grew into a way to graphically present information on network topology that is normally difficult and cumbersome to do by logging into individual devices. Such information includes a discovered L2 topology by CDP, using this to present rapid-PVST port roles and so forth.

From the company blog:

Today, we are introducing NOCtools which uses this library to provide a number of useful tools including:

  • CDP Neighbours: for a given CDP enabled device, display its CDP neighbours with information and also a graph showing connected ports.
  • CDP L2 Topology: graph the layer 2 network topology based on a recursive crawl of CDP neighbours.
  • RSTP Topology & Port Roles: similar to CDP L2 Topology above but this takes a specific VLAN and identifies and graphs Per-VLAN Spanning Tree port roles.
  • Per-VLAN RSTP Port Roles: a tool that will display the per-VLAN Rapid STP port roles for a given VLAN (or for all VLANs) on a device.
  • Inter-Device VLAN Comparison: a tool that will compare VLANs available (and their respective names) across selected devices allowing you to ensure consistency as well as perform simple security audits.

Follow the links about for screen shots and more details. We are releasing this under a GNU GPL license in the hope that the wider networking community will benefit from them.

A PHP SNMP Library for People Who HATE SNMP, MIBs and OIDs!

I hate SNMP! But I have to use it on a daily basis with my company, Open Solutions.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an essential tool in the trade of network engineering but it’s also a serious PITA. Finding MIBs, OIBs, making them work, translating them, cross-vendor translations, etc, blah, blah. And then, when you do find what you need, you’ll have forgotten it months later when you need it again.

Anyway, while trying to create some automatic L2 topology graphing tools (via Cisco/Foundry Discovery Protocol for example) and also some per VLAN RSTP tools to show port states, I started writing this library. As I wrote, I realised it was actually very useful and present it here now in the hopes that the wider network engineering community will find it useful and also contribute back MIBs.

An example may best illustrate the library:

First, we need to instantiate an SNMP object with a hostname / IP address and a community string:

$ciscosw = new \OSS\SNMP( $ip, $community );

Assuming the above is a standard Cisco switch, let’s say we want to get an associate array of VLAN names indexed by the VLAN ids:

print_r( $ciscosw->useCisco_VTP()->vlanNames() );

This yields something like the following:

Array (
    [1] => default
    [2] => mgmt
    [100] => cust-widgets
    [1002] => fddi-default
    ...
)

It really is that easy.

See the GitHub project page: https://github.com/opensolutions/OSS_SNMP

We’ve Released Some of our Nagios Plugins

We create a lot of Nagios installations for our own systems over, for customer systems which we manage and as a service over at Open Solutions. We’ve written a lot of custom Nagios plugins over the years as part of this process.

We are now making a concerted effort to find them, clean them, maintain them centrally and release them for the good of others.

To that end, we have created a repository on GitHub for the task with a detailed readme file:

They main goal of Nagios plugins that we write and release are:

  • BSD (or BSD like) license so you can hack away to wield into something that may be more suitable for your own environment;
  • scalable in that if we are polling power supply units (PSUs) in a Cisco switch then it should not matter if there is one or a hundred – the script should handle them all;
  • WARNINGs are designed for email notifications during working hours; CRITICAL means an out of hours text / SMS message;
  • each script should be an independant unit with no dependancies on each other or unusual Perl module requirements;
  • the scripts should all be run with the --verbose on new kit. This will provide an inventory of what it finds as well as show anything that is being skipped. OIDs searched for by the script but reported as not supported on the target device should really be skipped via various --skip-xxx options.
  • useful help available via --help or -?

Some New Nagios Plugins

Over the past ten years I have left many many new and hacked Nagios plugins on many servers around the globe. I’m now making a concerted effort to find them, clean them, maintain them centrally and release them.

To that end, I have created a repository on GitHub for the task with a detailed readme file:

As a starting point, there are four plugins available now:

  • check_chassis_cisco.pl – a script to poll a Cisco switch or router and check if the device was recently rebooted; its temperature sensors; its fans; its PSU; its CPU utilisation; and its memory usage.

 

  • check_chassis_server.pl – a script to poll a Linux / BSD server and check its load average; memory and swap usage; and if it has been recently rebooted.

 

  • check_portsecurity.pl – a script to check all ports on a Cisco switch and issues a critical alert if port security has been triggered resulting in a shutdown port on the device.

 

  • check_portstatus.pl – a script which will issue warnings if the port status on any Ethernet (by default) port on a Cisco switch has changed within the last hour (by default). I.e. a port up or a port down event.