Help Caveats
There are a few anomalies in the help files for Net-SNMP that deserve
your attention.
1. Volunteers are welcomed
Please understand that this is a volunteer effort. Suggestions
are welcomed. Offers to contribute are encouraged.
2. Documentation format is mostly fixed width
The documentation is set for fixed width text. Changing this would be
time consuming and would have to be re-done for each release if the
original man pages change. See the note on offers to contribute.
3. Conventions may be different from what you are used to
The Net-SNMP project is subject to conventions that may conflict with
what you may have been comfortably using. If you are not aware of
these conventions, there will be hours of entertainment in store for
you. Please know that the Net-SNMP coders are sympathetic to
different conventions, but as conventions go, these are not too
distasteful.
CLI = MS-DOS command line interpreter. When you open a command
prompt window, you are using the CLI.
SH = UNIX command shell. May be sh, bash, ksh, csh, all are
variations on the UNIX command shell.
- If you use .BAT files, follow the MS-DOS conventions.
- If you use GNU shell, follow the UNIX conventions.
- If you don't know what you are using, follow the MS-DOS
conventions.
3.1 Environment variables
MS-DOS convention used in CLI as would be used in a batch file:
- create : set
MYVAR=myvalue
- use
: %MYVAR%
- view
: echo %MYVAR%
- destroy : set MYVAR=
- %MYVAR% and %MyVar% are the same
- values with embedded spaces must be bracketed using double quotes.
UNIX convention used in SH as would be used in a shell script:
- create :
MYVAR=myvalue ; export MYVAR
- use
: $MYVAR
- view
: echo $MYVAR
- destroy : unset MYVAR
- $MYVAR and $MyVar are _not_ the same!
- values with embedded spaces must be bracketed using double quotes.
3.2 Pathname specifiers
MS-DOS convention used in CLI as would be used in a batch file:
- volume names (drive letters) [A-Z] followed by colon ":" are
acceptable.
- Directory segments are separated using the backslash "\"
- UNC components of pathnames may work
UNIX convention used in SH as would be used in a shell script or in a
configuration file:
- volume names [A-Z] followed by colon ":" are acceptable.
- Directory segments are separated using the slash "/"
- UNC components of pathnames do _not_ work!
Note: All paths contained in
configuration files must use forward slashes (Unix convention), NOT
back slashes.
3.3 List delimiters
MS-DOS convention used in CLI as would be used in a batch file:
- Elements are separated using the semi-colon ";".
- The last element must not be empty [list does not end with ";"].
The UNIX convention is not listed, because the Net-SNMP project, when
it is built on Windows platforms, honors the MS-DOS convention for
lists.
4. Pathnames are different than they appear to be
The manual pages were written over a period of years and for systems
that were primarily UNIX-based. The pathnames are not absolutely
the same as what you see in the documentation.
You can pretty much see that many paths start with "/usr/local".
For this platform, most of the time, you can substitute the instllation
folder of Net-SNMP for "/usr/local". For example, c:\usr or
c:\Program Files\Net-SNMP.
5. Configuration Files
All the configuration files follow the UNIX conventions for pathnames
and the MS-DOS convention for list delimiters.