Muonics Blog

MIB Smithy version 4.3 and MIB Smithy SDK version 4.2 are now available for download.

This release of MIB Smithy incorporates enhancements from the MIB Smithy SDK 4.1 and 4.2 releases and the MIB Views 1.6 release to add AES encryption support to SNMPv3 and several other usability enhancements to the SNMP tools built in to the MIB editor such as masking of agent passwords and improved handling of enumerated values for display. In addition, window size and position are saved and restored between sessions and behavior on multiple display setups is improved (similar changes will be made to MIB Views in a coming release).

In addition to these changes from MIB Smithy SDK 4.1 and MIB Views 1.6, the following changes are in this release:

346: Add tdom to build and distribution

Tcl’s tdom package is now built in to MIB Smithy for XML and XSL processing. Professional Edition users can begin taking advantage of it immediately; additional XML features are in the works for both Professional and Standard.

359: Save/restore window geometry across sessions

MIB Smithy now saves and restores its window location and size between launches, rather than always opening to a fixed size/location relative to the screen size.

2710: wrong # args error importing mosy files

A “wrong # args” error could occur when importing mosy .defs files to reconstruct MIB module specifications from when reconstructing table definitions.

2459: Default window size on Windows with multiple displays

The default window size for MIB Smithy, when no previous session size is available, is no longer based relative to the desktop size. Previously this would make the window span multiple displays (particularly ridiculous on a triple display setup).

2714: [smilib format] using both OID and Syntax

You can now specify both an OID and syntax with the value given to the [smilib format] command, rather than having to choose one or the other. This way you can specify all three values from a received varbind and get the specific formatting (e.g. via DISPLAY-HINT) if the OID is known, or default formatting for the ASN.1 data type (e.g. hex for OCTET STRING) if it is unknown, with one command.

MIB Views 1.6 incorporates the following changes from MIB Smithy SDK 4.1, plus other changes to add AES support and several usability enhancements:

266: Add AES support to SNMPv3/USM

SNMPv3 and USM support now includes encryption using AES with 128-bit keys and Cipher Feedback Mode (RFC 3826). The privacy protocol is available under the name “AES128/CFB”.

2514: Add User Name to license message/dialog

The license dialog will now display your user name as the software sees it, to aid in generating user-based license keys.

2490: CBC-DES privacy protocol renamed to DES/CBC

The privacy protocol name “CBC-DES” was renamed to “DES/CBC” to align with “AES128/CFB” and better emphasize the encryption algorithm over the mode.

2515: Assertion failure validating undefined AUGMENTS

The application could terminate unexpectedly during MIB validation with an assertion failure when an AUGMENTS reference could not be resolved.

2550: Case insensitive matching for user-based licenses

User names are no longer case sensitive in the license keys, so a license should work despite differences in capitalization.

391: Table View: show subids for unparseable instance identifiers

The Table View now shows an extra column containing instance subidentifiers for a row if the index values can’t be parsed (either because of MIB errors or invalid instances), rather than empty index columns.

519: Add sorting to file list in Add/Remove MIBs dialog

The list of files in the Add/Remove MIBs dialog can now be sorted by clicking on the column header.

1302: Mask SNMP auth/priv password fields

The Agent Settings dialog now has a checkbox that can enable or disable masking of SNMPv3 auth/priv passwords in the dialog, which were previously always visible. Masking is now enabled by default.

916: Add event number column to trap watch

The Trap Watch tool has a new column giving a sequential notification number (starting at 1, and reset to 1 when the log is cleared).

895: Limits on timeout/retries in Agent Settings dialog

Entering very large values for timeout and retries in the Agent Settings dialog could result in an error or the calculated total time appearing negative.

2516: Enum labels not shown when defined in the OBJECT-TYPE

Enumerated OBJECT-TYPE values were shown only as an integer if the enumerations were defined directly in the OBJECT-TYPE (rather than through a TEXTUAL-CONVENTION). Both the label and number are now printed regardless of how they’re defined.

The following changes are available in in MIB Smithy SDK 4.1:

266: Add AES support to SNMPv3/USM

SNMPv3 and USM support now includes encryption using AES with 128-bit keys and Cipher Feedback Mode (RFC 3826). The privacy protocol is available under the name “AES128/CFB”.

2514: Add User Name to license message/dialog

The license dialog will now display your user name as the software sees it, to aid in generating user-based license keys.

2490: CBC-DES privacy protocol renamed to DES/CBC

The privacy protocol name “CBC-DES” was renamed to “DES/CBC” to align with “AES128/CFB” and better emphasize the encryption algorithm over the mode (particularly as a GUI selection). “CBC-DES” remains for backwards compatibility. “DES” was previously available as shorthand, but this option was removed since it will automatically match “DES/CBC”.

2515: Assertion failure validating undefined AUGMENTS

The SDK could terminate unexpectedly during validation with an assertion failure when an AUGMENTS reference could not be resolved.

2550: Case insensitive matching for user-based licenses

User names are no longer case sensitive in the license keys, so a license should work despite differences in capitalization.

2489: Correction to tnm $session info security results

The Tnm wrapper “$session info security” should return a list of supported security levels/protocols. However, it was including md5/des when it shouldn’t (i.e., in the demo where DES is unsupported), and wasn’t including sha/des when it should.

Wanted to use MIB Smithy SDK to develop Tcl/Tk based SNMP applications you can distribute to your customers but User-Based and Host-Based Licensing made that infeasible? There’s an option for that now with the MIB Smithy SDK Developer License (or MIB Smithy SDK “Embedded Edition”).

MIB Smithy SDK Embedded provides all the same features as a regular license for MIB Smithy SDK, but is a special build and Developer License Agreement. Each Developer License grants a single developer a royalty-free license to embed the SDK and distribute it as an integral component of the developer’s applications, and includes a Single User or Single Host License for the normal SDK to use for development and internal use.

When you purchase online or by purchase order, a license and download permissions for both will be added to your account. The Developer License Redistributables available from the Downloads page contains only the files necessary for redistribution so you don’t have the overhead of downloading MIB modules and documentation bundled with the SDK twice.

As previously (but quietly) announced, User-Based Licensing was introduced in MIB Smithy SDK 4.0, and subsequently in MIB Smithy 4.2 and MIB Views 1.5. Earlier versions of these products supported only Host-Based Licensing.

Host-Based Licensing permits any user to use the software on a single specified computer, provided it’s used by only one person at a time. This scheme is useful in multi-user environments where use is less frequent, as licenses can be shared in this manner, with the trade-off being limits on how often the license can be transferred to another computer.

User-Based Licensing, on the other hand, permits a single specified user to use the software on any computer, provided it’s used on only one computer at a time. This scheme is useful in environments where a user uses multiple computers or changes computers frequently (such as on a desktop and laptop), with the trade-off being that each user needs their own license.

The User-Based Licensing feature was implemented in these releases, but until now the systems on the web site weren’t set up to handle it. From now on, when initially configuring their license key, new customers can choose whether to designate it as a User-Based or Host-Based License, and whether to use the old license key format (compatible with all versions) or new license key format (compatible with these versions and later) for Host-Based Licenses. The new format includes a couple of freely editable plaintext fields (usually filled in with the product name and serial number) that make it easier for customers with multiple license keys to distinguish them from one another, and gets rid of those BEGIN/END lines people often don’t realize are required parts of the old key format.

Customers who initially purchased their license prior to December 31, 2010 (through end of this year) who are using Host-Based Licenses can elect to permanently convert their keys to User-Based Licenses, provided their support is current, and can now do so online by following link at the bottom of the License Detail page, accessible via serial number link at Manage Licenses. This future cutoff date was chosen to allow for transition time, as some current MIB Smithy SDK users may want to switch to User-Based Licenses, and may wish to acquire additional licenses, but need time to port their scripts or hardware from SDK 3.x to 4.x API and Platform Changes.

After conversion to a User-Based License, you’ll be permitted to continue to use your old Host-Based license key as necessary for migration and script porting, but it may no longer be shared (it must be used only by the newly assigned user) and no further Host ID transfers will be permitted.

The new format looks approximately like this, with the two fields in ||’s editable in any way that helps you keep track of your licenses (except by inserting | characters):

|MIB Smithy Professional - Windows|XXXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX|dcPkYQW
hJeSOYzDPDYvWprYQoaQd9zsoDihw25qLweMriJBDksDQbRuwbHfdprYfIKQdQQ
YjY42AzazjkeNn30s8ygPiOOChK2UveIM4BWNmF2Vg=lyma9fS60Ah9k0JZ02ja

If you’d like to convert your license to the new format, but stay with Host-Based Licensing, please contact support. As with conversion to User-Based, your support must be current (it’s only supported by the above versions of the software).

P.S. No, that’s not a valid license key, so don’t even try. :)