# Does bsnmpd actually work on 12.2?



## vmb (Mar 10, 2021)

I am trying to get bsnmpd running on a FreeBSD 12.2 machine but I am not having much luck. I have tried running it with the command line argument to specify a config file, but it silently refuses to run as a service and I never see it listening on any ports.

Although bsnmpd is bundled into a standard installation it isn't documented in the FreeBSD handbook.

This is the only documentation I have found online:
https://people.freebsd.org/~harti/bsnmp/
https://monitoringartist.github.io/community.zenoss.org/docs/DOC-9132.html
https://wiki.freebsd.org/SnmpMonitoringModulesStatus

Has bsnmpd slipped into obscurity?
Do you have any better documentation for bsnmpd?
Have you actually got it running on 12.2 with proven output from a snmpwalk query directed to it?
If not using bsnmpd for 12.2, what are you using instead?


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## vmb (Mar 10, 2021)

I checked in /var/log/messages and found one line in the config that was giving trouble regarding authentication. I have commented out that entire section in the config file and bsnmpd is now running and listening on udp 161 and 162.

Would still like to read some better documentation than just poking around with the config file.


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## richardtoohey2 (Mar 10, 2021)

This will sound sarcastic, but I don't mean it that way!  Does the man page have any more information?

```
man bsnmpd
```
I don't use SNMP let alone this program so not sure if the man page helps you at all.


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## vmb (Mar 11, 2021)

Yes the man page has got some important content in there. The default /etc/snmpd.config is commented but not sufficiently to explain a lot of what is happening.

I am looking for info now on the importance of the snmpEngineID for SNMPv3 authenticated connections. Not sure how to set it, what format it should be in.


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## richardtoohey2 (Mar 11, 2021)

Have a rummage in the source code?  Someone else might come along and give you specific answers, but there might be clues in the source.

e.g. https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/usr.sbin/bsnmpd/bsnmpd/snmpd.config

And more here:









						freebsd-src/contrib/bsnmp at main · freebsd/freebsd-src
					

FreeBSD src tree (read-only mirror). Contribute to freebsd/freebsd-src development by creating an account on GitHub.




					github.com


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