Blog

MIB Smithy 4.7 Released

MIB Smithy 4.7 is now available for download. As with the recent MIB Views and MIB Smithy SDK releases, due to the unusually long time since the previous release, I have extended support periods for MIB Smithy users whose support expired (or was due to expire) after October 1, 2012 but before January 31, 2014, so that this release is available to those users as part of their annual support agreement.

Changes in this release:

5876: Set up file associations at install time

MIB Smithy file associations are now registered by the installer, rather than by the application itself, so that Windows can properly manage removal of the associations at uninstall time.

381: Use XML format for project files

MIB Smithy project files are now stored in XML rather than INI format to allow for future features with more complex configurations. When opening an old format (.mip) project file you will be prompted to save to a new (.smproj) file and the project will be converted to the new format.

5720: Reordering notification objects

Reordering commands (Move Up/Move Down) were added to the Objects property for Notification workspaces. As the ordering of the objects affects the on-the-wire encoding of the notifications, they can’t be arbitrarily reordered by MIB Smithy the way e.g. group members can, but using the “Select” button tended to put them in alphabetical order.

5127: Change preferences file format to XML

MIB Smithy application preferences are now stored in XML rather than INI format to allow for future features with more complex preferences. Existing preferences will be converted automatically.

5114: Use DOM to generate XML

MIB Smithy now uses an actual DOM implementation to build its XML output format for MIBs (and preferences, project files, etc), rather than rudimentary text operations. This is less prone to introducing malformed XML and may allow for future operations on the DOM document.

5878: Windows: Prefer Application Data folder over Registry for preferences

MIB Smithy will no longer save application preferences to the Windows Registry except as a fallback if it can’t save elsewhere. Instead, preferences are saved to the user’s Application Data folder. Existing preferences will be imported, and user given the option to remove or preserve the old registry entries.

5932: “Error in custom build script” during MOSY build

Spaces in output directory names were not handled properly when compiling to MOSY format, resulting in an “error in custom build script” message.

5767: Improve Unsigned32/Gauge32 conversion to derived types

SNMP tools will better handle converting Unsigned32 and Gauge32, which have the same on-the-wire encoding, to the proper syntax for display purposes provided appropriate MIBs are loaded.

5781: Missing REFERENCE property pages

The MODULE-COMPLIANCE and AGENT-CAPABILITIES workspaces were missing tabs to allow editing of those macros’ REFERENCE properties.

5115: XML-SMI schema corrections

Minor corrections were made to the XML-SMI schema to make the RangeSubspec and Enumeration definitions legal XSD syntax.

5128: Changing module for imported symbol should not add new import

Editing the module name for an existing symbol in the IMPORTS list will now actually change which module it is imported from, rather than causing the symbol to be imported from both modules (unless the “Add” button is used rather than “Modify”).

2121: Add support for pre-localized and unlocalized keys

SNMP tool sessions can now be configured directly with unlocalized or localized auth/priv keys, rather than requiring passwords and letting the session manage conversion to keys and key localization.

5801: Add options to CLI tools to specify keys rather than passwords

The bundled CLI tools/sample scripts now have options for specifying SNMPv3 auth/priv keys directly (localized or unlocalized), rather than only allowing passwords to be specified.

2277: Give validator messages unique IDs

All parser and validator messages have been moved to a message table with unique IDs, which are provided in messages printed to the configured log channel and in arguments to the configured log command. The actual IDs are still subject to change with reorganization, but this allows one to (for example) implement filters to effectively disable messages that aren’t desired.

1839: ASN.1 Type Assignment with type BITS

An error is now generated at parse time when attempting to use ASN.1 Type Assignment notation (Name ::= Type) with the “BITS” construct (which is not allowed in this form), rather than just quietly correcting it.

5397: XML-SMI XSD: use xsd:token type where appropriate

The XML-SMI Schema was changed to use “xsd:token” rather than “xsd:string” for some types where appropriate. Semantically the schema is unchanged by this as “xsd:token” is a subset of “xsd:string”, but “xsd:token” more closely matches the (existing) value restrictions.

1870: Add support for MODULE-CONFORMANCE (RFC-1303)

Support was added for parsing, editing, and validating the MODULE-CONFORMANCE construct from RFC 1303 (the SMIv1 predecessor to SMIv2’s AGENT-CAPABILITIES). The XML-SMI Schema was also updated to add support.

6065: Add support for MIB Views agent files

Added support for using MIB Views agent files with the MIB Smithy SNMP tools to save and restore SNMP agent settings to/from files.

5809: Remember SNMPv3 Trap Watch configuration

SNMPv3 Trap Watch tool configuration (port, SNMPv3 user name, keys, etc.) is now stored in the user’s preferences file and remembered between runs.

5954: Improve GUI responsiveness during walk

The SNMP Walk tool could appear to update in bursts if more CPU time was spent processing messages than allowing for GUI updates. It will now ensure the GUI updates when entries are added to the result table.

5953: Bad option “-fulloid” error in MIB Browser

A ‘Bad option “-fulloid”‘ error could occur in the MIB Browser due to changes introduced in version 4.6 to better handle ambiguous MIB definitions.