ITM Agent Insights: Debugging problems of an SNMP Agent you created with Agent Builder

Body

This blog will help you with your SNMP agent that you built with Agent Builder when it is not being able to retrieve data and, in the TEP GUI, you see the NO_INSTANCES_RETURNED error code.  Here is how you can debug this problem.

The first thing you should do is enable the trace level in the agent log. 

     For all new instances or productcode[_instance name].config
    -Edit the line that begins with KBB_RAS1= to set the following trace:  KBB_RAS1=ERROR (UNIT:snmp ALL)

Once the traces are enable, recreate the problem.  In the log file you will find some messages - generated by the snmpqueryclass module - showing the problem.

For example, you might find messages like the following:

     (4CD40703.0198-9:snmpqueryclass.cpp,1250,"handle_snmp_response_async") Error values: index=1, status=5                                         
     (4CD40703.0199-9:snmpqueryclass.cpp,106,"match_oid_prefix") Active RAS1 Classes: EVERYT EVERYE EVERYU                                           
     (4CD40703.019A-9:snmpqueryclass.cpp,106,"match_oid_prefix") Entry       
     (4CD40703.019B-9:snmpqueryclass.cpp,154,"match_oid_prefix") Error status 5 != SNMP_ERROR_noError                      

As you can see from the messages above, the root cause of the problem is the error code 5.  The status 5 error indicates that the SNMP agent on the remote system replied to our request with a "general error".  Once you get a clear idea of the error code that the ITM agent received from the SNMP agent, you will need to run the snmpgetnext and snmpwalk commands for the problematic OID.  In this case, if you run the snmpwalk command, then you will receive all the proper information but, at the end of the output, you might see an error like the following one:

     Error in packet.                                               
     Reason: (genError) A general failure occurred                   
     Failed object: SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.x.x.x

This error message will reflect the error code 5 in the agent trace log.  It means that the problem is not related with the ITM agent but with the SNMP agent that provided the problematic outcome.

Additional ITM Agent Insights series of IBM Tivoli Monitoring Agent blogs are indexed under ITM Agent Insights: Introduction.

Subscribe and follow us for all the latest information directly on your social feeds: