Blog

I am pleased to announce the release of MIB Smithy SDK 3.4.4. Many bug fixes have been made in this release to clear the way for new features.

Changes in this release:

741: Allow empty modules in SMI parser

Modules without any assignments in them (which might happen if you create a module in MIB Smithy and save it before defining anything in it) can now be loaded by the SMI parser.

253: Documentation for database -logcommand setting

Documentation has been added for the SMI Database’s -logcommand setting, which allows user control over the formatting of compiler and parser messages.

851: XML version of SNMPv2-SMI errors about IMPORTS

Validating SNMPv2-SMI from XML format caused a false error regarding OBJECT-IDENTITY needing to be imported due to module version not being determined when there is no imports element.

848: Tables are not saved/restored from XML correctly

Single-identifier subtypes (as in the ‘SysORTable’ in ‘SEQUENCE OF SysORTable’) were being assigned by the XML parser to the wrong field, resulting in saved/restored XML files from failing validation on tables.

842: Importing of XML files fails with no error message

The XML parser did not previously support sending log messages through the SMI database’s logcommand, just logchannel. This resulted in error messages not being displayed in the “Tasks” list of MIB Smithy.

844: XML files fail to import with large integers

Due to an arithmetic error in the XML parser’s integer overflow checking, XML files could fail to import with sufficiently large integer values (e.g. in range elements).

914: Dropped notifications during bursts

Notifications could be dropped during bursts of many (or large) packets due to the default receive buffer size provided by the Windows TCP/IP stack. The SDK now requests up to a 1 MB buffer for the trap socket (on all platforms) to reduce the risk of packet loss.

255: MacOSX: tclsh aborts loading SDK without valid license key

With Tk built for Aqua, tclsh would terminate with SIGABRT when not logged in at the console when attempting to display the license dialog. The SDK now checks if Aqua or X11 environments are available to the session before attempting to load Tk.

882: Relaxed case restrictions on database queries

Although the SMI parser was able to handle illegal upper/lowercase first letters for record names, the validation for database queries was still strict. This caused “$db get -fulloid Foo” to succeed but “$db get -fulloid Foo.0” to error regarding an invalid OID (which it is, but limited the usefulness of the parser’s handling of them).

912: SNMPv1 Trap-PDU encoding incorrect

The SNMPv1 Trap-PDU fields were being encoded in the wrong order when using the SDK to send SNMPv1 traps. Consequently, the SDK could not decode SNMPv1 traps sent to itself.

850: XML parser doesn’t check for equal min/max range values

Both the min and max attributes of the range element in the XML Schema are required, so single range values are generated as equal min and max. However, upon importing an XML file these values were not merged back into one, resulting in validation errors.

818: TRAP-TYPE’s REFERENCE field not preserved

The REFERENCE field of TRAP-TYPEs will no longer be lost when loading MIB modules.

817: Querying CREATION-REQUIRES returns only one element

Querying CREATION-REQUIRES property of a variation will now return all of the symbols listed, rather than only one.

254: snmplib format command documentation corrections

Docs for the snmplib format command were corrected to reflect the actual default format for enumerations (label only) and invalid “-format” argument in example 2.

308: -includes option missing from get capabilities

The documented -includes property for querying AGENT-CAPABILITIES statements was implemented only with the -mandatory-groups synonym, while both -includes and -mandatory-groups were supported for querying conformance modules and only -mandatory-groups was supported for querying MODULE-COMPLIANCE. Both ACs and MCs now support both synonyms.

I’m pleased to announce the release of MIB Views 1.4, especially after an all-too-long period of dealing mostly with server migration, virtualization, migrating data to FogBugz, and not enough product development. It’s been very good to get back to it. We’ve moved nearly all of the old to-do stuff to FogBugz cases, and after a thorough review and some planning and scheduling, it’s been great to be getting those cases closed, especially in MIB Smithy and MIB Smithy SDK (which will also be released later today) and regain some clarity, direction, and productivity.

Changes in this release:

673: Instance identifier parsing for SNMP Tools

The variable lists in the SNMP Query, Walk, Trap Watch, and Tree View tools can now be expanded like a tree to display additional index values decoded from instance identifiers.

639: Upgrade TreeCtrl to 2.2.5+

The TreeCtrl version used by MIB Views has been updated to version 2.2.5. Among other things, this may fix issues with artifacts on some platforms.

886: Relaxed OID input validation

OID fields no longer require that input be strictly legal form. If a MIB can be loaded despite illegal identifier capitalization, it should now be possible to do SNMP queries with it.

887: Additional icons for status bar messages

Icons were added to some status bar messages to make them more noticeable.

876: Attempts to contact localhost when unconfigured

Expanding branches in Tree View and attempting queries in SNMP Query now check if an agent has been configured first, just as the Goto entry and Refresh button do, rather than attempting the query with session defaults.

888: Unix: Ctrl-V to paste not working in text boxes

Back-ported a patch to the default Tk text widget bindings to fix bug preventing Ctrl-V from functioning as paste under Unix.

919: MIB Views remains running after windows closed

MIB Views will now exit upon closing the Trap Watch window if it is the last window remaining (except on the Mac, where the menu bar remains).

680: Inconsistent selection colors

Non-Tile components now get their selection colors from the Tile theme for improved consistency in appearance.

643: TreeCtrl +/- buttons don’t redraw sometimes

Due to a TreeCtrl bug under Windows, the expand/collapse buttons in trees would not redraw when pressed if there were no children. This is fixed with the newer TreeCtrl version.

386: Table View sorting indicator doesn’t clear

The sort indicator on the first column in the Table View would not be cleared when sorting on another column unless the user had previously clicked to sort on the first column, leaving two sorting indicators visible.

896: sysDescr not displaying in description bar

The label area under the toolbar of the main GUI will now display the agent’s sysDescr.0 value (if returned on first connect) as it was intended.

914: Dropped notifications during bursts

Notifications could be dropped during bursts of many (or large) packets due to the default receive buffer size provided by the Windows TCP/IP stack. MIB Views now requests up to a 1 MB buffer for the trap socket (on all platforms) to reduce the risk of packet loss.

As mentioned in my previous post, the old server previously handling our external mail transport and web server has been taken out of service, and the new servers are now online. There were a few minor reconfiguration glitches during the swap leading to 20 minutes of or so of downtime, but things should be operating normally now.

One thing you may notice right away is that the new web server should be quite a bit more responsive, due to much more powerful equipment, more servers handling separate functions, and to using pre-compiled php on the web server.

If you notice any problems with the site, please let me know. I’ll certainly keep an eye on things over the weekend as well.

This morning I moved the database backing the Muonics web site to a new server–part of our on-going (but thankfully almost complete!) IT infrastructure upgrades that have been consuming so much of my time of late. I haven’t seen any problems with the site yet, but if you notice any that aren’t resolved quickly, please do let me know (either by comment or email to support).

The web site itself will also be moving to a new server soon, once we’ve got email services integrated with our LDAP server (another of many upgrades to our internal systems I hope to write about in the articles section soon). Then we can retire the old server hardware that’s been in operation since 2001 when our flagship product, MIB Smithy, was just a spark of an idea.

I’m totally amped to get the last of this migration done. For one thing, I’ve been feeling a bit down on myself for getting behind on product development and neglecting to get the articles section rolling (too many commitments over the last year or two), and it will free up time to get back into it. But mainly I’m amped because of all the potential for reducing drag.

Internally, I’m looking forward a ton of automation, ability to handle and delegate to more staff, room for expansion, speed and capabilities that moving all our x86 platforms to high-end hardware running VMware Server will provide.

Externally, you can soon expect IPv6 and 64-bit platform support for our products and speeding our release cycle back up. We’re bringing the popular FogBugz bug/support tracker online with the last bit of web/email server migration, and I hope to have it integrated directly into our products soon thereafter. Since we’ve outgrown our current bug/feature tracking systems, and email inquiries aren’t currently handled directly through a tracker, this should be a big improvement in our planning, scheduling, and handling of such inquiries.

Overall I’m excited because all of these changes, while they’ve been time consuming and occasionally frustrating, represent a whole new chapter for Muonics: one that will feel to me much less like a startup and much more like a well-oiled machine.

MIB Smithy 4.0.8 provides bug fixes for the following issues:

• The right-click popup menu in the Project Tree will no longer show for Type/Value Assignment virtual folders as it was actually showing the menu for the module. Consequently, selecting “Remove” would remove the module, rather than all Type/Value Assignments as one might expect.
• A “record search string is ambiguous” error would occur when sorting OIDs for generating some output formats if the name assigned to one of those OIDs was also used in another module.
• An “invalid command name” error could occur when trying to show the calendar popup for REVISION and LAST-UPDATED timestamps due to a trace not being removed after the popup is hidden.
• Removed conversion of spaces to HTML entities in help file:// URLs under Windows to prevent errors launching help when MSIE 7 is the default browser.