snmpd.boots File

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Purpose

Provides the boot and engine ID information for the snmpdv3 agent.

Description

The snmpd.boots file provides the boot and engine ID information for the snmpdv3 agent. The file contains two elements: an engineID, and, engineBoots, the number of times that the snmpv3 daemon has been started.

Syntax

engineID engineBoots
The following list explains the variables in the syntax:
engineID
A string of 2 to 64 (must be an even number) hexadecimal digits. The engine identifier uniquely identifies the agent within an administrative domain. By default, the engine identifier is created using a vendor-specific formula and incorporates the IP address of the agent. However, users can choose to use any engine identifer that is consistent with the snmpEngineID definition in RFC 2271, and that is also unique within the administrative domain.
For the engineID that is associated with an IPv4 address, the first 8 hexadecimal digits represent a vendor enterprise ID obtained from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). For IBM®, this ID is 00000002. The last 16 hexadecimal digits are determined by vendor-formula. For IBM, the formula follows these rules:
  • The first two hexadecimal digits indicate the content of the next 14 hexadecimal digits.
  • The string 00 indicates that the next 6 hexadecimal digits are zeros, followed by the IP address of the agent in the last 8 hexadecimal digits.
  • The string 01 indicates that the next 6 hexadecimal digits contain a time stamp, followed by the IP address of the agent in the last 8 hexadecimal digits.
The agent is always used without a time stamp, so the engineID for an SNMP agent at IPv4 address 9.67.113.10 is 00000002 00000000 09 43 71 0A (spaces are added for clarity).
An engineID associated with an IPv6 address follows these rules:
  • The first 4 octets 80000002, which are a hexadecimal value, is an IANA assigned enterprise number.
  • The 5th octect 02, which is a hexadecimal value, indicates that it is an IP address.
  • The 6th octet to the 31st octet are hexadecimal values of the 16 bytes IPv6 address.
For example, the engineID for an SNMP agent running on IPv6 address 2000:1:1:1:209:6bff:feae:6d67 is 80000002 02 200000010001000202096BFFFEAE6D67 (spaces are added for clarity).
engineBoots
The number of times (in decimal) the agent has been restarted since the engineID was last changed.
Note:
  1. engineID and engineBoots must be specified in order and on the same line.
  2. Comments are specified in the file by starting the line with either an asterisk (*) or a pound sign (#).
  3. No comments are allowed between engineID and engineBoots values.
  4. Only the first non-comment line is read. Subsequent lines are ignored.

Example

The first string of numbers is the engineID, the second string is the number of times the snmpv3 daemon has been started. 
00000002000000000903E65F 0000000003

Files

Item Description
etc/snmpd.boots Provides boot and engineID information.