basic commands for snmpwalk

The concept of snmpwalk is very simple. All you are doing is asking a remote device that has an snmp string configured about a particular MIB. In the case of this example I am asking an IPS about it's operational status and it's interfaces. As long as you are allowed access to request the information (in the case of the IPS I specifically allowed the workstation I am requesting the information from) you should have no problem.

• From a unix box you would issue the following:

snmpwalk [the version of snmp it's running]
-c [the snmp sting you configured for read only access]
[the ip address of the remote device]
[the information being requested] You can get a listing of supported MIB's here

• It ends up looking something like this:

host$ snmpwalk -v2c -c public x.x.x.x ifOperStatus

- This is the output that you get for the operational status request:
IF-MIB::ifOperStatus.1 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifOperStatus.2 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifOperStatus.3 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifOperStatus.4 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifOperStatus.5 = INTEGER: down(2)

• Same thing for an interface description request:

host$ snmpwalk -v2c -c public x.x.x.x ifDescr
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1 = STRING: lo
IF-MIB::ifDescr.2 = STRING: eth0
IF-MIB::ifDescr.3 = STRING: sy0_0
IF-MIB::ifDescr.4 = STRING: ma0_0
IF-MIB::ifDescr.5 = STRING: ge0_0

• And another output from the interface admin status

host$ snmpwalk -v2c -c public x.x.x.x ifAdminStatus
IF-MIB::ifAdminStatus.1 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifAdminStatus.2 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifAdminStatus.3 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifAdminStatus.4 = INTEGER: up(1)
IF-MIB::ifAdminStatus.5 = INTEGER: down(2)

Happy querying!