ManageEngine MibBrowser Free Tool Documentation

Welcome to ManageEngine MibBrowser Free Tool, a complete MibBrowser used to test the SNMP agent running on a managed device. This documents briefly explains the various operation that can be performed using the MibBrower.

Introduction

The ManageEngine MibBrowser is a complete SNMP MibBrowser that can be used to provide MIB Browsing and related functions to users. SNMP MibBrowsers allow the user to view and operate on data available through an SNMP agent on a managed device, e.g. a router.

Features of ManageEngine MibBrowser :

  1. Load and view MIB modules in a MIB tree.

  2. SNMP operations like GET and GETNEXT can be performed by right clicking each node of the MIB tree. Definition of each node for a particular object can also be viewed.

  3. Enables to perform the basic SNMP operations such as GET, GETNEXT, GETBULK and SET.

  4. Display the output of any snmp operations in a tabular form with oid and value as columns.

  5. Supports multi-varbind requests.

  6. Enables real-time plotting of SNMP data in a graph. Line graph and bar graph are the two types of graphs that are currently supported.

  7. Provides a user-friendly view of SNMP table data. The table data can be viewed in a separate window called SNMP Table UI.

  8. Enables to view the incoming traps using Trap Viewer. It also allows parsing of traps.

  9. Enables loading of MIB's at startup.

In order to enable a better view of the data available on the SNMP agent a MIB file is usually provided with the managed device. This MIB file contains a description of the object hierarchy on the managed device, as well as the syntax and access privileges for each variable in the MIB. The ManageEngine MibBrowser provides the capability to load and view multiple MIB modules and traverse the MIB tree to look at the definitions for each MIB tree.

It allows "GET", "GETNEXT" and "SET" SNMP requests to a particular variable in the MIB of an SNMP managed device. It also has the capability to view multiple real-time graphs of data on the managed device as it changes over time. It also enables viewing SNMP tables.

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Overview

The primary window of the ManageEngine MibBrowser is made up of two frames. The left frame is the MIB Tree, in which the MIB files are loaded. The right frame is for setting options and for the result display. The right frame includes fields for

Depending on the option selected in the menu bar, the following is also visible:

User can show/hide the Toolbar, Mib Description panel, Muti varbind panel and Result display panel.

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System Requirements

Hardware

Software

 The following requirements are optional.

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Loading and Unloading MIB's

To load the MIB files in the MibBrowser use the LOAD MIB image button or select the File --> Load MIB menu item. This brings up a dialog box, which prompts you for the URL of the MIB module file you wish to load.

You can load multiple modules and choose any one of them as the current module at any time. When any MIB module is selected, the root node for that module becomes the current OID.

The loading of MIB modules is via URLs. A few MIB modules are provided in the mibs directory, i.e. RFC1213-MIB, HOST-RESOURCE-MIB, SNMPv2-MIB and SNMPv2-SMI. It may be convenient to copy your MIB module files to be loaded into the "mibs" directory.

To unload the loaded MIB select the node of the MIB Tree then click on the UNLOAD MIB image button or select the File --> UnLoad MIB menu item. This will remove the MIB Tree of the MIB unloaded.

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Settings

The ManageEngine MibBrowser can be used for MIB browsing, viewing and operate on data available through a SNMP agent. The MibBrowser allows configuration of various options needed for SNMP operations.

To set the various options click on the SETTINGS image button or select the Edit --> Settings menu item. This will bring up a dialog where the following options and its default values are set. The user can modify the default values as per requirements.        

Options

Default values

Other options

Snmp Version

V1

V2 / V2c / V3

Snmp port

161

any user defined port

Time out 

5 sec

any user defined value

Max repetitions

50

any user defined value for V2c /V3 version 

Retries

0

any user defined value

Non-repeaters

any user defined value for V2c /V3 version

                                                          

To set the SNMP V3 parameters click on the V3 SETTINGS tab in the settings dialog box. This will switch to the the screen for setting V3 Parameters. The following values can be set:

Options

Default values

Other options

Target host

local host

any host with SNMPV3 agent or proxy agent

Target port

161

any user defined port

User name

null

any user defined value

Security Level

NoAuth,NoPriv

Auth,NoPriv and Auth,Priv

Privacy Protocol

CBC-DES (if privacy is chosen in security level)

not available

Authentication Protocol

MD5 (if authentication is chosen in security level)

SHA

Authentication password

any user defined value

-

Privacy password

any user defined value

-



In the genral settings tab there is an option provided to enable serialization of V3 details. If this is chosen, then the users added will be serialized in the files UserEntry.ser and EngineEntry.ser. The next time when the MibBrowser is started, v3 details will be deserialized if the serialize V3 Tables is set to true.

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SNMP Operations

The MibBrowser allows the user to do the typical SNMP operations such as GET, GET NEXT and SET. It also allows to perform GET BULK for V2 and V3 version.

To do the GET operation, the user has to load the MIB file, select the desired node and press the "get" icon or choose the Operations --> Get from the menu bar. To fully specify an object to an SNMP agent, both the Object ID (which defines the type of object) and the instance (the specific object of the given type) need to be provided. From the MIB you get the Object ID, to which an instance needs to be added to completely identify the object of interest. For non-tabular (or scalar) objects this is simply an instance of 0 (e.g. sysDescr.0)(this need not be specified). For tabular objects the instance is defined by the MIB, and is a sequence of one or more variables.

We also need to specify the hostname and community string of the SNMP agent you're talking to in the appropriate field.

If you want to talk to a V3 agent, then you have to choose the Version3 in the Settings dialog and also make sure that the v3 parameters are set in V3 Settings Dialog .

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Automatic Device-SNMP Mapper



The ManageEngine Mibbrowser smartly suggests SNMP Object IDs for the SNMP enabled devices, while performing SNMP operations for that device. Auto suggestion is available
for SNMP devices for all major vendors. So, no need to remember the SNMP OID's or no need to traverse mib tree to select the nodes for doing SNMP Operations. User can
select suggested oid's and perform SNMP Operations. User can also add templates for new devices or customize like adding oids to the existing templates to
suit their requirements.

MibBrowser is pre bundled with more than 750 device templates which maps to SNMP OID of corresponding SNMP device types.

Reload the templates :

The MibBrowser loads the specific templates for device while carrying out the SNMP operations. User can 'add' OIDs in this templates. It can be loaded at run-time by reloading the
templates. To load this modified templates at run time, click "reload" button will parse and load templates and populate the latest SNMP OIDS for that device.

Import templates :

Go to MibBrowser --->Settings ---> Template Settings
Click "Import" Button to import the templates to <ProductHome>/Templates
directory.

View templates :

Go to MibBrowser---> Settings ---> Template Settings
You can view all the available templates. Select the template to view the available Oids and its description.

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Multi-Varbind Request 


Select the Multi-Varbind menu item from the View menu to view the Multi varbind panel. To do a multiple varbind request select the leaf node and append the instance and click on the Add button. It will add the OID given in the Object Identifier field and the value given in the SetValue field, both separated with a colon to the list. If value is not given in the SetValue field then NULL value is appended. You can add multiple number of OIDs and values like this. Make sure you have enabled the Multi-var check-box before doing a SNMP operation for multiple varbind SNMP request. Otherwise it will do a request for the OID in the Object Identifier field. To do multiple variable SNMP SET you ensure the OID and the Value are given in the textfields properly before adding to the list. Enable the Multi-Var check-box before doing the multiple variable SET.

To delete the varbind(s) from the list. Select the varbind(s) from the list and click on the Delete button to delete the varbind(s) from the list.

To Edit the varbinds added in the list select a varbind and click on the Edit button. It will show an OID and the Value of the varbind in the TextFields to edit the OID and the Value. Edit it and press OK button to modify the OID and Value or press the Cancel button to restore the old values.

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Trap Browser

TrapBrowser is used for receiving the traps. Using this you can view the incoming traps to the specified port. The traps can be sent from any host. The port number and the community name has to be set in the Trap Browser. The trap originator should send the trap to the port number specified in the Trap Browser.

The Trap Browser displays the trap information in a table format.

The trap browser has the following four columns:

All the received traps are displayed in rows. Clicking on any of the column headings pops up a dialog box which contains more additional information on the received trap. Right-clicking on the any of the column headings pops up a menu "Delete the selected Rows", which can be used to delete any of the selected rows. Clicking on the ParserEditor opens up a TrapParser which is used to parse the trap events.

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Trap Parser

The configuration of the Trap Parsers can be done by the below steps:

The trap parser is used to configure and parse the trap events. Since Traps typically contain cryptic information not easily understandable to the users, trap parsers are required to translate or parse traps into understandable information.

Trap Parsers files

Parsing traps is achieved by configuring a list of trap parser files. Only one trap parser file can be applied to a given trap. The match criteria in a parser determines whether a specific trap matches a trap parser. The search for matching trap parsers is done from the trap parsers list starting at the top. Once a matching trap parser is found, an event is generated and no other trap parsers will be used on that trap.

Match Criteria

The match criteria determines whether the trap will be parsed by the given trap parser. All fields must match for the trap parser to be applied to a trap. The three fields are,

Enterprise Field

The enterprise field is the SNMP enterprise identifier in the trap, which is used to uniquely identify traps for a particular application. If you specify this field, the parser will only be applied if the trap enterprise field starts with the enterprise field you specify. The only exception is when the enterprise field is left blank, in which case the trap will be allowed to be parsed.

Generic Type

Each trap should specify one among the following:

Specific Type

Each trap has a specific type number. This number must be specified for the trap parser, and only when this matches, the trap parser be applied to a trap. The only exception is when the specific field is left blank or filled with negative value , in which case the trap will be allowed to be parsed

Setting Trap Parser Parameters

The following are some important fields and information on how to configure them for a given trap.

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Trap Parser Customization


In Trap Parser the match criteria can also be customized to parse based on an oid and value or the agent Adress and port number. For example to parse the oid and value,

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Table

The ManageEngine MibBrowser provides an user-friendly of viewing SNMP Table data. The table data can be viewed in a separate window called SNMP Table Panel. The SNMP Table Panel provides various options for table handling such as adding a row to the existing table, viewing graphs, index editor etc.

The following steps should be taken to view the SNMP table in the SNMP Table Panel:

To view the SNMP Table click on the SNMP TABLE image button or select Snmp Table menu item . This brings up an SnmpTable if the selected OID is a table. In the SnmpTable, clicking on the "Start" button will start getting the columnar objects.

The following options are available in the SNMP Table Panel of the MibBrowser:

Apart from the above options if we right click on the table header (where the column name is displayed) it will display a menu with options

The above options also can be made use of.

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Set Operation using SNMP Table Panel


Using SNMP table, the SET operation for the table variables becomes easier. To set values for the table variables the following steps needs to be followed:

For creating a new row in a table

If the RowStatus is not present in the table definition then you can only modify the existing row by double clicking the corresponding cell in the table.

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Graphs

The ManageEngine MibBrowser enables real-time plotting of SNMP data in a graph. Currently two types of graph are supported - line graph and bar graph. The SNMP data to be polled should be of integer or unsigned integer data type. Typically the values that are plotted will be of type Counter, Gauge or Timeticks.

The following steps should be taken for plotting the SNMP data in the graph:

After selecting the variable from the MibTree, click on the GRAPH image button or select the menu item Line Graph or Bar Graph from the View menu. This brings up an automatically updated graph showing the results of periodically polling the specified agent for the specified OID. By default polling for the graph is done every 5 seconds.

The following options can be configured for the graph:

The "Stop" button can be used to stop the polling of the variable. The "Restart" button can be used to restart the polling. The "Close" button is used to close the graph window.

The MibBrowser can plot multiple graphs showing values for different variables from different hosts . Note that the graphs does not plot the absolute value but only the difference between two values.

Debugging and decoding

The MibBrowser application provides facility to view the debug output of the SNMP operations. To view the debug output the debug window has to be invoked by clicking on the debug icon or by selecting the View --> Debug menu from the menu bar.

As long as this window is opened, debugging is turned on, and debugging output is generated. When this window is closed the debugging is turned off.

The three icons in the debug window provide the following function:

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Decoding


The decoder is used to decode the SNMP debug messages . The decoding can be done in the following ways :

Method - I

Method - II

In both the cases the decode information should only contain the HEX dumps and nothing else. Any other information has to be removed manually.

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Script Configuration for Trap or Responses


The script configuration is used to define the SNMP rules for trap or response and executes the corresponding action. This can be done in the following ways :

To create a new script, Click on the "Create New Script" button.

  1. SNMP version (i.e. SNMPv1 or SNMPv2c or SNMPV3)

  2. Select any Snmp Message type (i.e. Traps or Response) and provide a respective fields.
  3. Other Conditions (i.e. V1AgentAddress , OID & Value , Community , SenderAddress)

     Scripts :

  • Click on the Create button to create an action script for SNMP SET operation, Send Mail and Send SMS.
  • Load your action script file using import button (i.e python or bat file)

     Custom Class :

  • Execute your own set of classes using Custom Class option.
  • Enter your custom class name in the text box.

  • Refer JavaDocs to create and compile a custom class.

Now, the MibBrowser execute the action for matched criteria.

Copyright 2015, ZOHO Corp.