CURRENT MEETING REPORT
Reported by Bob Stewart, Cisco Systems,
and Andy Bierman, Cisco Systems
Minutes of Entity MIB Working Group (entmib)
First Session
Maria Greene presented a proposal for removing
the community string object in favor of a more abstract object
that represented a naming scope without giving away a full community
string. She included a proposal for formatting community strings
using that object. We discussed this for most of the meeting and
concluded that we didn't agree and wouldn't change the MIB.
Maria presented a definition of a logical
entity which we liked.
(Editor's note: This is not a complete
record of the first session of the ENTMIB Working Group).
Second Session
Keith suggested a consensus that the Entity
MIB is allowed but not required unless it has something to point
to. Discussion ensued:
- Can there be a hierarchy of different
contents?
- Must we preclude different transport
addresses for different logical entities?
- How do we account for multiple paths
to the same information?
- Why do we need a transport address?
- Consensus reached on Keith's suggestion
with no document changes.
Maria Greene presented a proposed Johnson-Greene
index:
- Maximum hierarchy depth of four using
two indexes.
- How about level/parent/index?
- A subgroup will go aside to try to resolve
problems with this.
- The subgroup reported failure to resolve
problems.
- We reached no consensus for changes.
We discussed issues list from Dallas:
- SNMPv2 is removed.
- We have sufficiently discussed the MIB
structure.
- We decided that after a reboot the hardware
must get the same indexes unless the hardware configuration is
different.
- We have sufficiently discussed containers
and containees.
- We haven't found a sufficient standard
list of physical class values.
- We have added and deleted objects as
needed.
- We have covered Trap issues.
- We decided an agent may not return only
a subset of logical entities.
- The definition of a logical entity is
as presented by Maria on the 4th.
- sysORTable issues:
- We accepted Maria's physical containment
table.
Andy presented some discussion on the entAliasMappingTable:
- It is currently too complex. Changes
proposed.
- Changes accepted: switch to physical
then logical index and useOID for port, remove entAliasMappingIndex
as index.
We need definitions relative to hosts for
backplane, chassis, etc. Text will be added, but not too definitive.
We discussed per-class numbering:
- Separate number ranges are good for
separate classes.
- Modeling slots moves the parent around.
- You should number within a container
and look up a level for relative position.
- No change.
We have nothing more to say about multiple
agents.
The editor will have an updated document
next week.
We discussed adequacy of compliance and
interoperability testing:
- entLogicalType and descriptor strings
need improvement.
- We should add an OID for descriptor.
- Descriptor is already redundant with
the existing OID.
- The intent was to display the descriptor
and use the OID for interoperability.
Further discussion on this topic will be
on the mailing list.