pgsnmpd v14

pgsnmpd is an SNMP agent that can return hierarchical information about the current state of EDB Postgres Advanced Server on a Linux system. pgsnmpd is distributed and installed using the edb-asxx-pgsnmpd RPM package, where xx is the EDB Postgres Advanced Server version number. The pgsnmpd agent can operate as a standalone SNMP agent, as a pass-through subagent, or as an AgentX subagent.

After installing EDB Postgres Advanced Server, you must update the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/edb/as14/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

This command doesn't persistently alter the value of LD_LIBRARY_PATH. See the documentation for your distribution of Linux for information about persistently setting the value of LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

The examples that follow show the simplest use of pgsnmpd, implementing read-only access. pgsnmpd is based on the net-snmp library. For more information about net-snmp, see the net-snmp documentation.

Configuring pgsnmpd

The pgsnmpd configuration file is named snmpd.conf. For information about the directives that you can specify in the configuration file, see the snmpd.conf man page (man snmpd.conf).

You can create the configuration file by hand, or you can use the snmpconf perl script to create the configuration file. The perl script is distributed with the net-snmp package. net-snmp is an open-source package available from http://www.net-snmp.org/.

To use the snmpconf configuration file wizard, download and install net-snmp. When the installation completes, at the command line, enter:

snmpconf

When the configuration file wizard opens, it might prompt you to read in an existing configuration file. Enter none to generate a new configuration file that isn't based on a previously existing configuration file.

snmpconf is a menu-driven wizard. Select the menu item 1: snmpd.conf to start the configuration wizard. As you select each top-level menu option displayed by snmpconf, the wizard walks you through a series of questions, prompting you for information required to build the configuration file. After you provide information in each category relevant to your system, enter Finished to generate a configuration file named snmpd.conf. Copy the file to:

/usr/edb/as14/share/

Setting the listener address

By default, pgsnmpd listens on port 161. If the listener port is already being used by another service, you might receive the following error:

Error opening specified endpoint "udp:161".

You can specify an alternative listener port by adding the following line to your snmpd.conf file:

agentaddress $host_address:2000

This example instructs pgsnmpd to listen on UDP port 2000, where $host_address is the IP address of the server (e.g., 127.0.0.1).

Before invoking pgsnmpd, you must create the pgsnmpd schema and set the search path to create tables in the pgsnmpd schema using the following commands:

CREATE SCHEMA pgsnmpd;
SET search_path = pgsnmpd;
\i pgsnmpd.sql

Invoking pgsnmpd

Ensure that an instance of EDB Postgres Advanced Server is up and running. (pgsnmpd connects to this server.) Open a command line and assume superuser privileges. Then, invoke pgsnmpd with a command in the following form:

POSTGRES_INSTALL_HOME/bin/pgsnmpd -b
  -c POSTGRES_INSTALL_HOME/share/snmpd.conf
  -C "user=enterprisedb dbname=edb password=safe_password
      port=5444"

Where POSTGRES_INSTALL_HOME specifies the EDB Postgres Advanced Server installation directory.

Include the -b option to specify for pgsnmpd to run in the background.

Include the -c option, specifying the path and name of the pgsnmpd configuration file.

After the -C option, include connection information for your installation of EDB Postgres Advanced Server in the form of a libpq connection string.

Viewing pgsnmpd help

Include the --help option when invoking the pgsnmpd utility to view other pgsnmpd command line options:

pgsnmpd --help
  Version PGSQL-SNMP-Ver1.0
  usage: pgsnmpd [-s] [-b] [-c FILE ] [-x address ] [-g] [-C "Connect String"]
     -s : run as AgentX sub-agent of an existing snmpd process
     -b : run in the background
     -c : configuration file name
     -g : use syslog
     -C : libpq connection string
     -x : address:port of a network interface
     -V : display version strings

Requesting information from pgsnmpd

You can use net-snmp commands to query the pgsnmpd service. For example:

snmpgetnext -v 2c -c public localhost .1.3.6.1.4.1.5432.1.4.2.1.1.0

Where:

-v 2c option instructs the snmpgetnext client to send the request in SNMP version 2c format.

-c public specifies the community name.

localhost indicates the host machine running the pgsnmpd server.

.1.3.6.1.4.1.5432.1.4.2.1.1.0 is the identity of the requested object. To see a list of all databases, increment the last digit by one (for example, .1.1, .1.2, .1.3).

The encodings required to query any given object are defined in the management information base (MIB). An SNMP client can monitor a variety of servers. The server type determines the information exposed by a given server. Each SNMP server describes the exposed data in the form of a MIB. By default, pgsnmpd searches for MIBs in the following locations:

/usr/share/snmp/mibs

$HOME/.snmp/mibs

• On this page
• Configuring pgsnmpd
• Setting the listener address
• Invoking pgsnmpd
• Viewing pgsnmpd help
• Requesting information from pgsnmpd