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.

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. :)

The format used specify OCTET STRING values in hex in the SNMP Query Tool and Agent Settings dialog has changed, in keeping with SDK 4.0’s changes to binary data handling. Instead of prefixing the value with 0x, as in 0x:12:ab:cd, you surround the value in single quotes, as in '12:ab:cd'. However, you can now suppress conversion from hex, treating the value as a literal string (with quotes) by surrounding the value in another pair of single quotes, as in ''12:ab:cd''. Essentially, any string value with surrounding single quotes will have one set of quotes stripped off; if, after stripping, the value looks like colon-delimited hex (without quotes), hex conversion will occur.

Although these releases don’t do much beyond what SDK 4.0 brings, it’s still a significant milestone. Now that MIB Smithy and MIB Views are up to the new SDK version, the holds on new features are lifted, so I can get back to tackling my sizable wish list for these products. First, though, I’ll be working on getting the web site updated to support generating the new username-based license keys and providing access to the Linux x86_64 platform (x86_64 won’t be treated as a unique platform from x86 as far as purchasing and license keys are concerned, but it is a different build/distribution, and the systems aren’t set up yet to handle two different files for a single platform+version).

1735: INDEX and AUGMENTS forbidden with RFC1155-SMI, RFC1065-SMI

It is now an error, rather than a warning, for an OBJECT-TYPE to have an INDEX or AUGMENTS clause when imported from RFC1065-SMI or RFC1155-SMI.

1760: TEXTUAL-CONVENTIONs must not derive from other TEXTUAL-CONVENTIONs

It is now an error, rather than a warning, for SMIv2 modules to define TEXTUAL-CONVENTIONs derived from other TEXTUAL-CONVENTIONs. This is also now an error for COPS-PR-SPPI modules, which previously gave no warning.

1747: Additional validation for variant access levels

PIB-MIN-ACCESS is now checked to ensure its values are allowed by COPS-PR-SPPI. MODULE-COMPLIANCE’s PIB-MIN-ACCESS and MIN-ACCESS, and AGENT-CAPABILITIES ACCESS, are now checked to ensure their values are within bounds of the referenced object’s (or PRC’s) MAX-ACCESS or ACCESS value.

1761: Improved version-specific validation with missing IMPORTS

Previously, when a macro (such as OBJECT-TYPE) was not imported as required, certain version-specific validation checks (such as allowed STATUS values) were suppressed, giving only an error about the missing import. Now, the version may be assumed based on other imports that are present, allowing further checks to be performed.

1733: Suppress bit zero warning when no bits are defined

A redundant warning regarding starting BITS at zero when also erroring about needing at least one bit to be defined.

1738: Clarify access keywords in error messages

Validator messages should use the proper access keyword (ACCESS, MAX-ACCESS, PIB-ACCESS, MIN-ACCESS, PIB-MIN-ACCESS) depending on the record type and version (SMIv1, SMIv2, COPS-PR-SPPI) of the record. In some cases, they simply said “ACCESS”.

1701: False errors and changes to BITS DEFVAL validation

The algorithm for checking set bits in hex/binary DEFVALs versus BITS named bit values was not correct, leading to errors for valid DEFVALs. Also, an integer is no longer allowed for DEFVAL with BITS type, and undefined bits may no longer be set in the DEFVAL (previously these were warnings).

1720: Disallow hyphens in COPS-PR-SPPI identifiers

As with SMIv2 modules, which COPS-PR-SPPI derives from, a warning is now produced for identifiers with hyphens in PIB modules.

1717: Wrong range given in INSTALL-ERRORS message

INSTALL-ERRORS was being checked versus the correct allowed range of 1..65535, but the error message indicated 0..65536 was allowed.

1689: False subordinate OID warnings for conformance records

Conformance sub-records were not properly ignored when checking relative structure of the OID tree, causing false errors/warnings to be produced (nothing should be considered relative to these records as they’re purely an implementation detail, not truly separate from the conformance statement).

1682: Value Assignment values missing from error messages

Error messages regarding ASN.1 Value Assignment values not matching the type were giving an empty string for the value rather than the actual value. (Note: only ASN.1 Value Assignments of type OBJECT IDENTIFIER are allowed in MIB and PIB modules; this validation is part of plain ASN.1 support.)

1685: False warning for starting bit zero when using BITS-derived type

A warning message was produced for OBJECT-TYPEs with SYNTAX referencing a TEXTUAL-CONVENTION of type BITS indicating that bits should start at zero even when the TEXTUAL-CONVENTION itself started at bit zero.

1684: Missing error for invalid PIB-REFERENCES

An incorrect function argument was suppressing the error message for PIB-REFERENCES pointing somewhere other than a PRC (row) OBJECT-TYPE.

1759: REVISIONs not sorted properly by XML parser

MODULE-COMPLIANCE REVISIONs are normally sorted when assigned or parsed from normal SMI syntax (with parse-time warning in the latter case), and therefore not checked during validation. They were not sorted properly by the XML parser, however, leaving them out of order with no indication. They are now sorted at parse time from XML as well.

1716: Severity of Value Assignments in SMIv2/SPPI

It’s now an error, rather than a warning, to use ASN.1 Value Assignments other than of type OBJECT IDENTIFIER in SMIv2 and COPS-PR-SPPI modules. It remains a warning for SMIv1 modules, but is now suppressed entirely for modules that aren’t SMI or SPPI (just ASN.1).

1736: Redundant messages for Counter with bad ACCESS

Use of Counter, Counter32, or Counter64 syntax and ACCESS, MAX-ACCESS, or MIN-ACCESS value unknown to the SMI version now produces one error message for the unknown value, rather than a second for the value being disallowed with counter types.

1729: PIB-INDEX may use attributes of other PRCs

An error message was produced if PIB-INDEX referenced an attribute of another PRC (table) rather than an attribute of the same PRC. As this is explicitly allowed by RFC 3159 section 7.5, this check has been removed.

1731: OID in module header forbidden in SMIv2

It’s now an error, rather than a warning, to assign an OID to a module in the module in SMIv2 or COPS-PR-SPPI modules (which use MODULE-IDENTITY instead). It remains a warning in SMIv1 and is now suppresed for modules that are neither SMI or SPPI (just ASN.1).

1728: OBJECT-IDENTITY and Assignment with same OID should be a warning

It is now a warning, rather than an error, when an OBJECT-IDENTITY statement and OID Value Assignment have the same OID, as it is with an OID Value Assignment and other macros having the same OID.

1727: Missing error for INDEX with negative enumerations

An intended warning for an INDEX pointing to an object with possible negative enumerations was not being produced.

1725: Superfluous auxilliary INDEX warnings

The warning for a table using only columns from other tables for indices is no longer generated when already indicating an error because the INDEX clause is not allowed (e.g. on a scalar OBJECT-TYPE).

1711: Undefined symbols should always error if known to be undefined

Dependency check “failed” errors and “skipped” warnings are now more consistent in behavior: e.g., a check is “skipped” with a warning if cross-checking can’t be performed because a module isn’t loaded, while an error is produced if it is loaded but the symbol imported from is not defined.

1710: Mixing SMI and COPS-PR-SPPI base types/macros

It’s now an error, rather than a warning, to import both SMI and COPS-PR-SPPI base types and macros within the same module (note: importing MIB OIDs and TEXTUAL-CONVENTIONs in PIB modules is allowed, provided the underlying base type is the supported by the SPPI).

1690: Wrong format indicated in DEFVAL type/value mismatch errors

When comparing the form of DEFVAL values to an object’s SYNTAX, the wrong keyword for the form of the value was specified in some errors pertaining to hex and binary. The wording of DEFVAL type/value related messages is also now more consistent.

1686: Redundant hex/binary length errors

When validating hex and binary DEFVALs, redundant errors were produced for some types when they were both not of the required length for that type and not the right multiple of digits. There was some inconsistency in whether or not they were checked for capitalization, and the wording of hex/binary related messages was also clarified.

1683: UNIQUENESS value missing from message

A warning message regarding UNIQUENESS values was showing an empty string for the value rather than indicating the actual value warned about.

1708: SMI base modules should not require MODULE-IDENTITY

On the off chance you load SNMPv2-CONF into the SDK and validate it, despite not defining anything other than macros, it will no longer error about needing a MODULE-IDENTITY statement (as with other SMI/COPS base modules).

1668: Error editing AGENT-CAPABILITIES modules

A ‘can’t read “window(groups)”: no such element in array’ error would occur when opening the workspace for AGENT-CAPABILITIES modules.

1670: Some combobox lists not updated with record name change

Some comboboxes for selecting available records in a module to be added as a group or variation in AGENT-CAPABILITIES and MODULE-COMPLIANCE statements were not being automatically repopulated when the name of the module (referenced by the SUPPORTS or MODULE clause) was changed, instead requiring the workspace to be reopened or reverted to get an updated list.

1669: Combobox for VARIATION, GROUP clauses populated from wrong module

Some comboboxes for selecting available records in a module to be added as a group or variation in AGENT-CAPABILITIES and MODULE-COMPLIANCE statements were being populated from the module in which the conformance statement was defined, rather from than the module referenced by the statement’s SUPPORTS or MODULE clause.

MIB Smithy, as you may be aware, is our editor/compiler environment for SNMP MIBs. My goal in creating the product was to make it as easy as possible for novices to write MIBs, but thorough enough in checking and enforcing standards compliance and compatibility with other compilers that even staunch experts and purists, who wrote MIBs using text editors and command-line tools, to use. Such a tool would save developers a great deal of time and money through a little form-filling and point-and-click action to quickly generate fully standards-compliant MIBs rather than through manual editing and worrying about silly things like missing a comma or curly brace.

In this regard, I believe I succeeded in my goal, though I’m always looking for ways to improve upon it. There are over 650 validation checks based on calls to generate compiler messages alone, which doesn’t account for checks handled by a single function applied in multiple places (like all the checks done on all OIDs). I’m a fan of eating out own dog food, so when consulting clients ask me to design and implement MIBs for them, I use MIB Smithy myself to do so and save weeks of development time in the process, translating to less billable time for the client. I like to believe using MIB Smithy saves our users similar time and costs whenever they use it, allowing the software to quickly pay for itself many times over.

Flash back to 2001 for a moment when I started writing the software, with the core in C++ and GUI in Tcl/Tk. The standards compliance of C++ compilers, particularly Visual C++ 6.0, were abysmal. Much of the architecture of the C++ portion needed to be based on partially reinvented wheels because one couldn’t rely on a simple thing like a standard string class being portable between platforms and compilers, and I design for cross-platform support as a rule. As time went on, the “partially” aspect became more and more of an obstacle to implementing various plans for the product, much as the compilers once were.

C++ standards compliance in g++ and Visual C++ have both come a long way since then, as have open source cross-platform libraries for previously tedious things to implement. For the 4.0 SDK development branch, I decided it was time to uplift, refactor, and simplify the code to get rid of the maintenance cost of those tired old wheels. That was a rather large undertaking itself due to how deep and interconnected the dependencies ran. Unfortunately, back in 2001, I hadn’t yet picked up the habit of test driven development, which is the idea that you write unit tests before (or in parallel with) with the code you’re testing. I did later, which means there are a lot of automated regression tests for things like SDK APIs that came later, but there weren’t for core functionality like the MIB parser and validator, originally tested manually, that haven’t changed much–exactly the places with the most code changes now.

Recognizing the need to thoroughly check for regression issues before releasing the 4.0 SDK branch, I hired someone to tackle regression test automation for the parser (about 450 tests there), and I’m currently working on tests for those 650++ checks our compiler does. That means, essentially (and tediously), writing about 650 small MIB modules, by hand, intentionally broken in various ways that the MIB Smithy editor won’t let you (or will only let you because sometimes you need break something temporarily to remove a dependency or change a design). Therein lies the irony.

As a side benefit, I have in a few instances discovered some previously unknown bugs in the current stable branch and been able to fix them. But boy do I wish I could be eating our dog food right now. Don’t you? Why don’t you give MIB Smithy a try?

Changes affecting MIB Smithy, MIB Smithy SDK, and MIB Views:

305: Host ID not matched when interface is disconnected

Windows interfaces that were disconnected were not recognized by the license manager, requiring laptop users to have to swap license keys depending on whether they were on wired or wireless. This is is no longer necessary, as the interfaces are seen whether connected or not.

727: Clarify “trailing hyphens will be stripped” error

The parser message produced for identifiers with illegal trailing hyphens was stripping the hyphen in the error message (indicating the corrected identifier was invalid) yet not automatically correcting the error as it should.

1368: Windows: IPv6-only interface Host IDs not available

Windows interfaces configured to support only IPv6 could not previously be used for licenses keys, but can now.

1406: Circular type references cause crash

A type definition derived from another type definition, which is derived from the first type definition, would lead to a crash due to infinite recursion. (Note: TEXTUAL- CONVENTIONs cannot legally derive from other TEXTUAL-CONVENTIONs.)

Additional changes affecting MIB Smithy SDK:

312: Changing IPs with SNMPv3 loses auth/priv state

Changing the target IP address of an existing SNMPv3 auth/priv session without also setting the auth/priv password did not sufficiently prepare the session to localize keys with the next request, causing the session to switch to no-auth/no-priv.

1354: Timeout of Tnm-style async requests causes error with future request

Upon timeout of a Tnm-style async request, the callback was being invoked using non- Tnm style arguments, which would typically cause an error, when it should not be invoked at all.

Changes affecting MIB Smithy

482: Updated Tcl/Tk version

The Tcl/Tk base for MIB Views was upgraded to 8.4.19. Among other things, this fixes a crash at startup on later versions of Mac OS X.

606: Application icons for Unix

Full-color application icons have been added to Unix platforms, replacing the old monochrome bitmaps.

1272: TreeView: lexicographic errors can cause loop

In certain circumstances, an agent returning lexicographically incorrect responses to get-next requests could cause branch expansion to loop until a user requested stop, and duplicate branches could be displayed. More protections against lexicographic errors were added to prevent this.

Changes affecting MIB Smithy and MIB Smithy SDK

1130: XMLSMI: some binary strings not formatted correctly

In some cases, using the ‘bstring’ integer format attribute would result in the binary value not being quoted/suffixed properly (e.g. ‘B’00001011 instead of ‘00001011′B).

1133: XMLSMI: capability variation parse error

A “variation element unexpected or unrecognized” error would occur due to attempting to parse the wrong element when parsing AGENT-CAPABILITIES variations.

1159: XMLSMI: piberrors should be parsed as enum list

The piberrors element was being parsed as a value reference, rather than an enumeration list. This was fixed previously for the SMI parser and in the schema and database APIs, but not in the XML parser.

1124: XMLSMI: oid child element doesn’t work in some places

Using the oid element to define a defval or index with an OID value rather than an identifier or with importsfrom to disambiguate imported modules resulted in a parse error.

1137: XMLSMI: wrong size/range using min or max attribute only

When using the size or range element with only the min or max attribute, the other was defaulting to 0 rather than defaulting to the same value.

1138: XMLSMI: syntax tag element’s ‘implicit’ attribute not preserved

The implicit attribute of the syntax tag element was not being checked or preserved by the XML parser. This would generally only affect SMI base modules represented as XML, not MIB/PIB modules.

1146: XMLSMI: text wrapping issues on load

Newlines were being collapsed in places they shouldn’t when parsing MixedText fields like description, resulting in (for example) <pre> not being preformatted.

Changes in this release:

This version of MIB Smithy includes changes made in MIB Smithy SDK 3.4.4, plus the following changes.

877: Additional keyboard bindings for trees

The Project and Files trees in the main GUI now have left and right key bindings to navigate, close, and open branches and behave as the MIB Browser tool does.

922: Instance identifier parsing for SNMP Tools

The variable lists in the SNMP Query, Walk, Trap Watch, and Tree View tools can now be expanded like a tree to display additional index values decoded from instance identifiers.

857: Close button missing on workspace

Due to missing images in the Windows distribution, the red close button in the upper right corner of workspace pages was not visible.

841: Error when saving file with unresolved OID

A “Root identifier … does not exist” error would occur during OID sorting when attempting to save or preview a module with OID dependencies that were not loaded.

878: Unix: Build dependency checkbuttons not working

The checkbuttons in the dependency section of the Build Settings dialog did not work when using the default X11 and “classic” themes due to Tile not defining a separate indicator element. These checkbuttons are now functional with these themes.

845: Inconsistent import failure messages in log

When adding a single file to a project that failed to import, log messages would be generated that indicated it both failed and was imported. Only the failure message will now be generated.

903: Unable to correct case from Project Tree

When using the popup dialog to rename records, MIB Smithy was checking if the old and new case of the first letter were the same rather than verifying the case was valid for the record type.

881: “invalid workspace type undefined” error

An “invalid workspace type” error could occur when double-clicking a record in the Project tree to edit properties if the record was defined under an implicit node (e.g. “xyz.0.1″, with no assignment for “xyz.0″), as seen for enterprise-specific TRAP-TYPEs in SMIv1 modules.

642: TreeCtrl +/- buttons don’t redraw sometimes

Under Windows, +/- buttons wouldn’t redraw when expanding/collapsing a branch that had no children until geometry changes forced a redraw. This is fixed in the upgraded TreeCtrl.

635: “Save As” should not allow multiple files with the same name

MIB Smithy does not normally allow multiple files with the same name in a project. However, “Save As” was not checking to see if the file name was already in use in the project before saving.

681: Inconsistent selection colors

Non-Tile components now get their selection colors from the Tile theme for improved consistency in appearance.

894: Unix: Ctrl-V to paste not working in text boxes

Back-ported a patch to the default Tk text widget bindings to fix bug preventing Ctrl-V from functioning as paste under Unix.

905: Target selection after drag-and-drop

After drag-and-drop copying and moving records within the project tree, the newly created or moved record will now be selected.

• The right-click popup menu in the Project Tree will no longer show for Type/Value Assignment virtual folders as it was actually showing the menu for the module. Consequently, selecting “Remove” would remove the module, rather than all Type/Value Assignments as one might expect.
• A “record search string is ambiguous” error would occur when sorting OIDs for generating some output formats if the name assigned to one of those OIDs was also used in another module.
• An “invalid command name” error could occur when trying to show the calendar popup for REVISION and LAST-UPDATED timestamps due to a trace not being removed after the popup is hidden.
• Removed conversion of spaces to HTML entities in help file:// URLs under Windows to prevent errors launching help when MSIE 7 is the default browser.