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All communications channels to Muonics (web site, phone, email) have been down for almost three weeks and I wanted to apologize for appearing to have suddenly and closed up shop with no notice.

I received notice that the lease was being terminated and was in a mad scramble to get everything physically prepared for the move and to find and secure a new lease elsewhere. By the time I was [almost] prepared, knew where things were moving to, and get moving bids, the movers had an opening for the either next day or more than a month after the lease was to terminate. Less than 24 hours was just too short of a time to have new internet services or a backup web site in place to provide notice to customers.

I had been wanting to switch ISPs for some time but was waiting for their wireless or fiber options to become available at the old place. They would not be at the new place yet either, but I decided to take the opportunity to switch anyway. Unfortunately the service they could offer now, a rebranded service from a third ISP that they could get installed a few days after the move, turned out to be an unworkable disaster. It was another week before giving up on that ISP and another week still before I could get the old service with the old ISP moved to the new location.

So, once again I apologize for the downtime and the lack of responsiveness leading up to the move. Fortunately things are finally, mostly, back online. There is still more to do and I have a fair bit of catching up to do, but hopefully things will be back to normal within a few more days.

MIB Views 3.0 is now available for download.

MIB Views 3.0 is a full rewrite of the GUI from a Tcl/Tk base to a C++ (wxWidgets) base. The new code base should be easier to improve and maintain as the whole application is now C++ (instead of a mix of C++ and Tcl/Tk) and can all be debugged and developed using one set of tools. With the rewrite comes a generally more modern look and feel, as well as several new features that have been on the TODO list quite some time. It does, however, also bring some new platform requirements and dependencies in some cases. Some of these are requirements of wxWidgets, and some are due to retiring old OS versions that are long past their end of life.

Platform Changes:

1. Solaris is now supported on the x86_64 architecture, in addition to prior SPARC support.
2. Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD versions of the application now require GTK2+ to be installed on the system (along with its dependencies).
3. The minimum officially supported FreeBSD version is now 10 (previously 6.2). It may run on older versions, but can no longer be guaranteed. Prior versions were built/tested on a FreeBSD 6.2 host, and 6.2 has been past EOL for a very long time. The old host will be retired shortly and won’t be available for build/testing going forward.
4. The minimum officially supported MacOS X version is now 10.7, and builds will be for Intel architecture only. Apple stopped supporting PPC architecture some time ago, and building MIB Views for both architectures is no longer feasible with support being removed from XCode, etc.
5. The minimum officially supported Linux version has also changed. Prior versions were built on Fedora Core 5 (2.6.x kernel) hosts that are also long past EOL and will be retired shortly. The new versions are built on SuSE 11 (kernel 3.0.x) hosts, though the kernel version itself is not so important as dependencies (on the C/C++ standard library and such).

A list of shared library dependencies for Unix platforms is available here. Primarily, these are new GTK+ library dependencies and updated stdc++ library dependencies due to new GCC versions on Linux and Solaris platforms and FreeBSD’s switch from GCC to Clang.

Major Feature Changes:

• Adding MIBs to the application now installs them in a user’s personal data directory rather than in the application itself. Thus different users can have different MIBs loaded and do not require administrator privileges to add or remove MIBs from the application.
• The Walk View and Table View tools now use Get-Bulk under SNMPv2c and v3 for much faster data retrieval than SNMPv1 with Get-Next only.
• The Query tool now provides more powerful VarBind list management tools. You can add, remove, edit, and re-order VarBinds at will instead of having to clear the list to make changes. Value editors are far more type aware, such as being able to select enumerations by name or build BITS strings by enabling/disabling individual bits by name.
• The Table View tool now has row editing capabilities for tables with writable columns, and row creation capabilities for tables with RowStatus and EntryStatus columns. Using the Query View is no longer necessary for row creation and edit operations.

Windows screen shots are available in the updated online copy of the User’s Guide.

MIB Smithy 4.7.4 and MIB Views 2.0.4 are now available for download. These releases fix an issue with the Trap Watch tool’s agent configuration whereby an error would occur when attempting to change the SNMPv3 authentication or privacy protocols. An issue with elements missing from the MIB Smithy version of the tool were also fixed.

MIB Smithy 4.7.3, MIB Smithy SDK 4.6.6, and MIB Views 2.0.3 are now available for download. These releases include the following changes/fixes:

7065: SNMPv3 “reportable” flag incorrectly set in reports/responses

The “reportable” field in SNMPv3 msgFlags was incorrectly set when sending reports or responses, which would result in inability to handle inform requests with some agents.

8050: Enumeration as textual convention and table index

MIB validation could report false warnings about possible negative values when using an enumerated TEXTUAL-CONVENTION for the SYNTAX of an object used as a table INDEX. It would also fail to report errors in similar circumstances where negative enumerations are actually defined.

6797: Tnm notifier session default port should be 162 [SDK Only]

When creating sessions using [Tnm::snmp notifier], the default target port is now 162 (the normal target port for SNMP notifications) rather than 161 (the normal target port for SNMP requests).

6808: No callback for timed out Tnm requests [SDK Only]

When using the Tnm interface, SNMP requests (other than walk) using callbacks will now invoke the callback when the request times out or fails for some other reason, with appropriate parameters so the callback can detect the condition.

5108: Individual record preview should show comments [MIB Smithy]

When previewing ASN.1 format, a record’s comments property was typically only included in the preview text when previewing a whole module. The record’s comments are now included when previewing the individual record.

8055: Table View: clarification for non-table OIDs in entry [MIB Smithy, MIB Views only]

When a non-table OID is entered in the Table View’s search entry, it will generate a meaningful message to the user informing them so instead of an SDK API error message.

7319: Window -> Close command causes “wrong # args” error [MIB Smithy only]

A “wrong # args” error could occur when selecting the Window -> Close menu command and has been fixed.

6075: Existing MODULE-IDENTITY should select on create request [MIB Smithy only]

When attempting to create a MODULE-IDENTITY when one already exists, and the editor for the existing one is opened, the existing one will be selected instead of creating a new one. Only one MODULE-IDENTITY is allowed/required per module.

MIB Smithy 4.7.2 and MIB Smithy SDK 4.6.5 are now available for download. These releases include the following changes/fixes:

6601: Return id for wait/cancel when sending traps with delay [SDK]

The [$session trap] command will now return a unique ID, as is done with async requests, allowing the [$session wait] command to be used to wait (specifically) for the trap to be sent when transmission is delayed.

6602: Send messages immediately if no delay/window wait required [SDK]

Based on user feedback, the behavior introduced in SDK 4.6.4 whereby trap and async request APIs always return immediately (before transmission) has been changed to only return before transmission if the it would be delayed. The messaging APIs will service the Tcl event queue prior to returning, until the message is sent -OR- no more immediately serviceable events remain in the queue.

This restores prior API behavior when -delay and -window options are not in use, while preserving the intended fixes for CPU load and handling such delays asynchronously.

6600: Can’t specify SNMPv3 priv password for snmptrapd CLI tool/script

When the snmptrapd CLI tool/sample script was enhanced to allow specifying SNMPv3 auth/priv parameters, the options added were consistent with the other CLI tools/scripts. Unfortunately the -p option was already in use for specifying listener port, resulting in an error when trying to specify privacy protocol.

The option for specifying listener port has been changed from -p to -b to resolve the conflict. Additionally, -B can be used to specify listener address/interface (normally it will listen on all interfaces), and -s to disable use of straps/nmtrapd on Unix.

6620: sysUpTime not included in trap varbinds with Tnm interface

When using the Tnm compatibility interface to send SNMPv2c/v3 traps, sysUpTime was not being included in the sent trap’s varbinds.