Hi Rainer, I agree that it may not be a good use of time to try to develop configuration capabilities when there is little agreement about a common approach. My main point was that SNMP is not a particularly good choice for fully configuring a syslog implementation, and if that work were to be done, then it should be done to be compatible with the netconf standards-in-development-work for fully configuring managed entities.
I do believe that a small amount of SNMP configuration probably would be worthwhile. SNMP configuration capabilities should focus on those non-static aspects that are already relatively common in implementations, and where small management operations are likely to be useful and implementation-independent, such as enabling/disabling operation or setting the IP addresses of clients/servers. I anticipate that this would include probably less than ten managed objects, would not be very time-consuming to include, and would be useful for managing deployed implementations. Lack of standardization of such basic configuration parameters makes it harder for operators to use syslog. My $.02 dbh > -----Original Message----- > From: Rainer Gerhards [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 4:30 AM > To: Harrington, David; Glenn Mansfield Keeni; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: SyslogMIB Issue-#4 // Issue-#2 > > David, > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Harrington, David [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 9:53 PM > > To: Rainer Gerhards; Glenn Mansfield Keeni; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: RE: SyslogMIB Issue-#4 // Issue-#2 > > > > Hi, > > > > SNMP is good at monitoring systems, but not as good at configuring > > systems. The reason is fairly straightforward - Configuration > > requires a > > much more in-depth knowledge of the thing being managed than does > > monitoring. > > > > I can tell if my car is working properly by asking some stock > > questions > > - does the motor start? Does it run without excessive and unexpected > > noise? Do the tires inflate? Can you shift in various gears, > > etc. But if > > I had to actually build or repair a car, I would need to know > > much more > > about it. > > > > SNMP is designed to allow the development of standard mib > modules, and > > to let those be supplemented by vendor-specific mib > modules. We should > > work to find a common set of attributes that can be monitored. If we > > also want to be able to do common configuration tasks, then > we should > > also try to identify a common set of configuration parameters. > > Let me phrase my question rather bluntly: does it pay to > provide a very > minimal set of config settings given the fact that almost every vendor > has very different ways to do this. Also, in my experience customers > tend to use those vendor-specifc ways, simply because they need it. To > be honest, I think we will be hesitant to implement standard > configuration simply because I do not see any customer demand > for such. > I think we can put our ressources to efforts that receive a higher > demand. > > It may just be my personal feeling ... what do the other implementors > think? > > Rainer > > >
