I have an old version of Net-SNMP installed on one of my (old) servers and I would like to upgrade it to a slightly newer version. To be precise, I want to upgrade from 5.2.3 to 5.3.4.

Now I can do this without a problem by installing from source. But when I do that (./configure, make, make install) this installs the entire Net-SNMP package including all daemons etc. But I only want to update the already installed components.

Is there a way to do that from source?

You could omit the "make install" step and just copy the files you need. If you have a list of the currently installed files, it shouldn't be too difficult.

How was the existing version installed? From a package of some sort, I would guess?

Ah, didn't know you could do that.

Yes. Would installing from source create a problem/conflict with the installed version?

"Installing" is just a fancy name for "copying files to their proper locations and perhaps creating some symlinks".

The only conflict would be the mismatch between the installed version and the version number in the package manager database. This should have absolutely no consequences, unless you use the "upgrade" function in the package manager (it may decide to "upgrade" to a version that's older than the one you're actually running).

If you later decide to upgrade to a version that really is newer than the one you're running, the version mismatch will be resolved.