Blog

MIB Smithy 4.1.2, MIB Smithy SDK 3.4.6, and MIB Views 1.4.2 are now available for download, with essentially the same bug fixes in each. These will most likely be the last releases based on the SDK 3.4 development branch, as we’re finally getting close to having the SDK 4.0 development branch in a releasable state. Since it’s taken an unusually long time to release 4.0 branch and there are some potential compatibility issues you’ll need to be aware of, as well as new features affecting all three of these products, I’ll talk a bit more about it in a post to follow shortly.

Changes affecting MIB Smithy, MIB Smithy SDK, and MIB Views:

305: Host ID not matched when interface is disconnected

Windows interfaces that were disconnected were not recognized by the license manager, requiring laptop users to have to swap license keys depending on whether they were on wired or wireless. This is is no longer necessary, as the interfaces are seen whether connected or not.

727: Clarify “trailing hyphens will be stripped” error

The parser message produced for identifiers with illegal trailing hyphens was stripping the hyphen in the error message (indicating the corrected identifier was invalid) yet not automatically correcting the error as it should.

1368: Windows: IPv6-only interface Host IDs not available

Windows interfaces configured to support only IPv6 could not previously be used for licenses keys, but can now.

1406: Circular type references cause crash

A type definition derived from another type definition, which is derived from the first type definition, would lead to a crash due to infinite recursion. (Note: TEXTUAL- CONVENTIONs cannot legally derive from other TEXTUAL-CONVENTIONs.)

Additional changes affecting MIB Smithy SDK:

312: Changing IPs with SNMPv3 loses auth/priv state

Changing the target IP address of an existing SNMPv3 auth/priv session without also setting the auth/priv password did not sufficiently prepare the session to localize keys with the next request, causing the session to switch to no-auth/no-priv.

1354: Timeout of Tnm-style async requests causes error with future request

Upon timeout of a Tnm-style async request, the callback was being invoked using non- Tnm style arguments, which would typically cause an error, when it should not be invoked at all.

MIB Views version 1.4.1 is now available with the following changes:

483: Updated Tcl/Tk version

The Tcl/Tk base for MIB Views was upgraded to 8.4.19. Among other things, this fixes a crash at startup on later versions of Mac OS X.

605: Application icons for Unix

Full-color application icons have been added to Unix platforms, replacing the old monochrome bitmaps.

1271: TreeView: lexicographic errors can cause loop

In certain circumstances, an agent returning lexicographically incorrect responses to get-next requests could cause branch expansion to loop until a user requested stop, and duplicate branches could be displayed. More protections against lexicographic errors were added to prevent this.

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.

An unknown variable error that would occur when adding a MIB if either a file with the same name was already added or if copying/linking the file into the mibs directory failed, rather than the intended dialog, and was corrected in this release.

Changes in this release:

• nmtrapd under Linux could max out CPU usage due to Linux-specific handling of select() timeouts.
• Newlines and carriage returns in OCTET STRING values were forcing conversion to hex (such as in varbind values in responses) as if they were non-printable characters.
• A crash could occur if the environment variable for pointing to the license key file were mistakenly set to a directory instead.