snmp versus /proc

[Mike McGrath]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com 
> [mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Timothy Murphy
> Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2005 9:18 AM
> To: fedora-list at redhat.com
> Subject: Re: snmp versus /proc
> 
> Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> 
> >> I've been looking (not very hard) at RRD (round-robin 
> database), and 
> >> I notice that several examples displaying things like memory usage 
> >> use snmp (more precisely snmpwalk) to gather the information.
> >> 
> >> I'm just wondering if this still makes sense.
> >> Most of the information seems to be available in /proc , and I 
> >> wondered if it is just conservatism that leads people to 
> keep on with 
> >> snmp ?
> 
> > Programming with SNMP you get a wider range of network device's 
> > information than just by systems having a /proc partition 
> (like Linux; 
> > on BSD /proc often isn't even mounted for security reasons).
> 
> I can well believe that;
> SNMP seems to display an infinite number of variables.
> 
> However, all the examples I've seen
> are actually looking at variables available from /proc or 
> iptables, and it just struck me that the additional 
> complication of setting up snmp made the whole rrd thing 
> absurdly complicated (ie I haven't succeeded in getting it working!)
> 
> It just struck me that snmp + rrd might be something that 
> administrators of large systems had got into the habit of 
> using, which might actually not make sense any longer.
> 
> But as I said, I don't really know what I am talking about ...
> 
> --
> Timothy Murphy
> e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
> tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
> s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
> 
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> 

If you're interested in a good example of using SNMP for such graphs
take a look at Cacti:

http://www.cacti.net/download_cacti.php

I love it and it has made tracking a number of problems on our network
easier (everything from CPU fan speeds, hd space, network utilization,
to room temperature at night getting too high and power spikes every
morning at 3:30)

	-Mike