Template:FAQ:Applications 02

Firstly,

       cp MY-MIB.txt /usr/local/share/snmp/mibs

or

       mkdir $HOME/.snmp
       mkdir $HOME/.snmp/mibs
       cp MY-MIB.txt $HOME/.snmp/mibs

And then,

       export MIBS=+MY-MIB

or alternatively:

       echo "mibs +MY-MIB" >> $HOME/.snmp/snmp.conf

Note that you need both steps. The first command copies the file defining the new MIB to a expected location for MIB files. This defaults to /usr/local/share/snmp/mibs (or PREFIX/share/snmp/mibs if the the suite was installed into a different base location). Some ready-packaged distributions (such as Linux RPM packages) may look for MIB files in a different location, such as /etc/snmp/mibs - put the new file in this directory instead. This makes it available for everyone on the system. The tools will also look for mibs in your personal $HOME/.snmp/mibs directory, but this will only work for you.

The second command tells the tools to load in this new MIB file as well as the default set. Note that the tools do not load every MIB found in the directory - this is to avoid slowing them down excessively when there is a large collection of MIB files. If you do want the tools to load all the MIB files, set the environmental variable MIBS to the special value "ALL". Note that the value for this variable is the name of the MIB module, not the name of the MIB file. These are typically the same (apart from the .txt suffix), but if in doubt, check the contents of the file. The value to use is the token immediately before the word DEFINITIONS at the start of the file. Of course, if you load 'ALL' mibs, then this distinction is irrelevant.

Most of the tools (apart from 'snmptable') will work quite happily without any MIB files at all, as long as you are prepared to work with numeric OIDs throughout. The MIB files are only used for translating between numeric and textual forms for queries and responses. The same holds true for the agent - see the AGENT section for details.