How to send generic SNMP Traps with MonitorWare Agent.
Article created 2008-03-06 by Andre Lorbach.
This article will guide you to use MonitorWare Agent to
generate generic SNMP Traps and send them to your SNMP management software. It is also possible to use
WinSyslog instead of
MonitorWare Agent in some cases, however this article will target the
more powerful MonitorWare Agent. This article also requires at least
MonitorWare Agent 5.2 or higher, and the custom ADISCON mibs which are
included since MonitorWare Agent 5.2.
- You can
download a preconfigured configuration from here, which you can import
on your target system. The configuration sample will have comments for
better understanding. The MonitorWare Agent Client can
import the XML/REG configuration file by using the "Computer Menu".
- To obtain the most recent custom ADISCON mib files, download these two
files und put them into your mibs directory of your MonitorWare Agent
installation.
ADISCON-MIB.txt
ADISCON-MONITORWARE-MIB.txt
As you know MonitorWare Agent has many different input sources (services)
from which we can generate useful traps. In this article, I will show you how to
generate a SNMP Trap from a received Syslog message, so we are going to
use the Syslog Service.
1. Configuring MonitorWare Agent
1.1 Download and
Install MonitorWare Agent
1.2 Setup a Syslog
Server in MonitorWare Agent
2. Configuring the SNMP Trap
2.1 Create SNMP Trap Action
2.2 Filtering Syslog
messages (Optional)
2.3 Sending a test SNMP Trap
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So if you haven't done so already, go to
www.mwagent.com and download
the latest MonitorWare Agent Version. It is always recommended to use the latest
Version of MonitorWare Agent. Once the Download is done, go ahead and install
it. You may have to restart after installation, this depends on your System.
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 Start the MonitorWare Agent Client and skip the wizard on startup.
Then add a new Syslog Service called "Main Syslog Server". We use default values
here, Port 514 UDP. Leave the other Options as they are.
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First add a new Rule under your Default RuleSet called SendTrap. Then add a Send
SNMPTrap Action. The default values will already generate a generic "monitorwaretrap",
which is fine for most cases. But we are going to configure our own trap
properties.
So you have noticed that the Trap OID and the variable OID's are represented
numeric. Once you click on the Browser Button, the Client will automatically
load and display the installed mibs. You can configure the Configuration Client
to automatically load the mibs during each startup in the Client Options.
So as you can see you have a few trap OID's available, in this article we will
use the syslogtrap OID which is ".1.3.6.1.4.1.19406.1.2.1", or in human readable
form "ADISCON-MONITORWARE-MIB::syslogtrap". You can actually define the one or
the other form as OID, both will work but the textual representation only if you
have the ADISCON Mibs installed.
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 Now what you don't see in the mib browser is the list of variables which are
connected with the SNMP Trap. For the syslogtrap, we need syslogMsg,
syslogSeverity and syslogFacility.
So we are going to remove the default configured variable, and add our own ones,
for the message, syslog severity and syslog facility. Kindly add 3 new
variables, you use the Mib Browser to select the suitable OID's and also the
correct variable values (See the screenshot for more).
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 With
our current setup, you would send one SNMP Trap for each incoming Syslog
messages. But you may not want this, so you can optionally add some filters to
reduce the number of outgoing SNMP Traps.
For example you can add a Syslog Severity (Priority) filter, so that only syslog
error messages will be send as trap to your SNMP Manager.
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The easiest way to create a SNMP Trap for testing now is use the "Send Syslog
Test Message" from the Configuration Client tools menu. If you configured
filters, don't forget to set the correct syslog facility and priority.
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To show you how the result looks like, here is the output of snmptrapd on a
linux machine. There are many SNMP Manager utilities out there, you can even
receive SNMP Traps with MonitorWare Agent itself if you like.
2008-03-07 15:18:31 172.16.0.122 [UDP:
[172.16.0.122]:1119]:
DISMAN-EVENT-MIB::sysUpTimeInstance = Timeticks: (742090390) 85 days,
21:21:43.90 SNMPv2-MIB::snmpTrapOID.0 = OID: SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.19406.1.2.1
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.19406.1.1.2.1 = STRING: "MWAgent: This is a Test no. 1"
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.19406.1.1.2.2 = INTEGER: 3
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.19406.1.1.2.3 = INTEGER: 16
When you receive the trap with MonitorWare Agent, the message output will look
like this:
MonitorWare: source="172.16.0.122" community="public" version="Ver2" variables:
snmp_var_1 = 'DISMAN-EVENT-MIB::sysUpTimeInstance: 'Timeticks: (741870389) 85
days, 20:45:03.89'' , snmp_var_2 = 'SNMPv2-MIB::snmpTrapOID.0: 'OID:
ADISCON-MONITORWARE-MIB::syslogtrap'' , snmp_var_3 = 'ADISCON-MONITORWARE-MIB::syslogMsg:
'STRING: "MWAgent: This is a Test Error MEssage no. 1"'' , snmp_var_4 =
'ADISCON-MONITORWARE-MIB::syslogSeverity: 'INTEGER: error(3)'' , snmp_var_5 =
'ADISCON-MONITORWARE-MIB::syslogFacility: 'INTEGER: local0(16)''
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I hope this article will help you solving your tasks or shows you the
potential of MonitorWare Agent, and what you can archive with it. Feel free to
email me for recommendations or questions. Of course, the outlined actions are
only samples and you may do other things with them.
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