How to install SNMP v3 for Centos 6.x & RHEL

Kashif Aziz Awan
kashifaziz@ciit.net.pk
June 7, 2013 www.fb.com/kashifazizawan

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an “Internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP networks”. SNMPv3 moves away from the community string idea from older version, and into a username & password combo. The installation and setup is actually pretty straight forward. Here’s what you need to do:

##yum install net-snmp-utils net-snmp-devel

Yum will pick up the dependencies you need. Now as root, run (make sure snmpd is stopped first)

##/usr/bin/net-snmp-config --create-snmpv3-user -a PASSWD USERNAME

You’ll get the following output…
adding the following line to /var/lib/net-snmp/snmpd.conf:
createUser MYUSERNAME MD5 "PASSWD" DES
adding the following line to /usr/share/snmp/snmpd.conf:
rwuser USERNAME

Before testing make sure that UDP 161 is permitted through iptables, and restart snmpd

##iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 161 -j ACCEPT
##/etc/init.d/snmpd start

You should test your installation from another workstation using the SNMPWALK command.

##snmpwalk -v 3 -l AuthPriv -a md5 -A PASSWD -x DES -X PASSWD -u USERNAME 192.168.1.10

If the command fails, you will see an error. If you’re successful, your screen will fill up with a lot of SNMP messages. Enjoy!