Net::SNMP Changes

RELEASE 6.0.1 SEP-09-2010

• Removed all occurrences of the "locked" attribute that was deprecated in Perl 5.12.0.
• Changed the test validating the presence of a monotonic time value to check for invalid implementations.
• The SNMPv3 contextEngineID and contextName are now stored as part of the request allowing for these values to be changed between messages.

RELEASE 6.0.0 SEP-09-2009

• Substantial internal code cleanup was performed based upon the Perl::Critic module and the "Perl Best Practices" book.
• Added support for the Module::Build system for building, testing, and installing Perl modules.
• The translation logic for OCTET STRINGs now uses the definition of a DisplayString in RFC 2579 to determine if the octets are to be converted into a hexadecimal representation.
• The get_table() and get_entries() methods were refactored as part of the code cleanup. The get_entries() method now handles "holes" in tables better and indexes with a value of zero.
• The inheritance structure of the Transport Domain objects was updated to reduce code duplication and increase maintainability.
• The resolution of IPv6 addresses was made more exhaustive.
• The handling of OBJECT IDENTIFIERs was made more efficient by using [un]pack() with a BER compressed integer template.
• Additional validation of the values passed to most methods is now performed and the error messages have been made more robust.
• The documented examples were updated based upon commonly asked questions (specifically Example 3 and Example 4).
• A Response-PDU with an error-status set to "noError" no longer generates an error when the error-index is non-zero, as decribed in Section 4.2.4 of RFC 3416.
• The function oid_lex_cmp() was added to provide for the lexicographical comparison of two OBJECT IDENTIFIERs.
• The error-status is no longer set for the exceptions noSuchObject, noSuchInstance, and endOfMibView when translation is not enabled.

RELEASE 5.2.0 OCT-20-2005

• Removed the dependency on the IO::Socket::INET and IO::Socket::INET6 modules. The IO::Socket module is now used for all socket objects.
• The port information can now be included as part of the transport address specified with the session() Transport Domain arguments.
• Added support for specifying the scope zone index for IPv6 addresses as described in RFC 4007 - "IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture".
• The default value for the agent-addr in SNMPv1 Trap-PDUs is now the IP address associated with the interface on which the trap will be transmitted.

RELEASE 5.1.0 JUL-20-2005

• Support of the AES privacy protocol was updated to be compliant with RFC 3826 - "The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Cipher Algorithm in the SNMP User-based Security Model".
• Corrected an issue where any non-blocking SNMPv3 message queued prior to calling snmp_dispatcher() was sent with an empty contextEngineID.
• The first SNMPv3 discovery message is again being sent with a zerolength msgUserName as suggested by RFC 3414.
• All sockets are now flagged as non-blocking to prevent a possible deadlock due to an interaction between recv() and select().
• The sending of messages is now bounded by the receive processing rate to avoid receive buffer overflows.
• The return value of select() is now checked for both "undef" and -1.
• The "usm.t" tests are now skipped if any of the non-core modules required by the Net::SNMP::Security::USM module are not present.

RELEASE 5.0.1 SEP-09-2004

• The module is now again functional with Perl 5.6.x. Compensations were made for compatibility problems with the IO::Socket::INET and Math::BigInt modules packaged with Perl 5.6.x.
• The UDP/IPv6 and TCP/IPv6 Transport Domains are now functional when using version 2.0x of the IO::Socket::INET6 module.

RELEASE 5.0.0 JUL-20-2004

• Added support for the UDP/IPv6 Transport Domain listed in RFC 3419.
• Support for the TCP/IPv4 and TCP/IPv6 Transport Domains was added as described in RFC 3430 - "SNMP over TCP Transport Mapping".
• Optimizations were made to ASN.1 processing and preparation methods.
• Corrected a possible memory exhaustion error with OCTET STRINGs that contain "printf" format characters.
• The ASN.1 types associated with the ObjectSyntax values in the VarBindList can now be retrieved using the var_bind_types() method.
• The function snmp_type_ntop() was added for displaying ASN.1 types.
• The Net::SNMP::Dispatcher module now checks for select() errors.
• Passing the "-maxrepetitions" argument with a value of 1 or less to the get_table() or get_entries() methods instructs them to use get-next-request messages instead of get-bulk-request messages.
• The maximum allowed value for the maxMsgSize was reduced to 65535.
• The Perl modules for the non-default Transport Domains and Security Model are now loaded at runtime instead of compile time.

RELEASE 4.1.2 SEP-11-2003

• Removed an unintended dependency on the Crypt::Rijndael that would cause SNMPv3 support to be unavailable and the "usm.t" tests to fail due to a "strict subs" error in Net::SNMP::Security::USM module.

RELEASE 4.1.1 SEP-09-2003

• Corrected a misinterpretation of the "The AES Cipher Algorithm in the SNMP's User-based Security Model" draft specification that lead to the incorrect encoding and decoding of the last block of the message.
• The syntax of the get_entries() method was changed to expect the column values to entered as full OBJECT IDENTIFIERs allowing the traversal of conceptual rows in different tables which are indexed identically.
• The processing of the serialization of an OBJECT IDENTIFIER was optimized.
• The oid_lex_sort() function was updated to order OBJECT IDENTIFIER strings padded with spaces as lexicographically greater than unpadded strings.
• An empty contextEngineId in a response message is now accepted during the SNMPv3 discovery process.
• Corrected an argument validation error with the get_bulk_request() method.

RELEASE 4.1.0 MAY-06-2003

• Working in conjunction with the Extended Security Options Consortium (http://www.snmp.com/eso), support for additional privacy protocols has been added to the SNMPv3 User-based Security Model. "Extension to the USM to Support Triple-DES EDE in 'Outside' CBC Mode" Reeder and Gudmunsson; October 1999, expired April 2000 http://www.snmp.com/eso/draft-reeder-snmpv3-usm-3desede-00.txt "The AES Cipher Algorithm in the SNMP's User-based Security Model" Blumenthal, Maino, and McCloghrie; October 2002, expired April 2003 http://www.snmp.com/eso/draft-blumenthal-aes-usm-04.txt
• A new method called get_entries() was added to allow the retrieval of columns of a table entry using get-next-requests or get-bulk-requests.
• The argument "-maxrepetitions" was added to the get_table() method.
• Responses to SNMPv3 messages with non-default contextEngineIDs or contextNames are now properly processed.
• The method var_bind_names() was added to retrieve an array of the ObjectNames in the VarBindList in the order in which they were received in the GetResponse-PDU.

RELEASE 4.0.3 SEP-09-2002

• Net::SNMP objects are now destroyed as expected when they are no longer referenced. An internal reference to the object allocated by the Net::SNMP::Dispatcher module is now properly cleared.
• A socket with a file descriptor value of 0 is now accepted by the Net::SNMP module as a valid and open filehandle.
• Removed an "optimization" which was intended to provide a smoother initialization of the dispatcher but instead could lead to messages incorrectly timing out.

RELEASE 4.0.2 MAY-06-2002

• The SNMPv3 request message sent for time synchronization is now sent with the same securityLevel that is configured for the session.
• The "reserved" bits in the msgFlags field of an incoming SNMPv3 message are now ignored as suggested by RFC 2572.
• When encrypting a SNMPv3 message, the padding byte(s) are now set to a value equal to the size of the padding. "The actual pad value is irrelevant..." according RFC 2574 Section 8.1.1.2. However, there are some agents that expect this byte pattern.
• Corrected a reference count mismatch which would leave a listening socket open if no response is received from the remote agent.
• Corrected a "deep recursion" error that occurred when using the get_table() method to retrieve large tables in blocking mode.
• Using the "-delay" argument with the get_table() method no longer incorrectly delays between message exchanges when retrieving the table.
• Optimizations and improvements were made to the Net::SNMP::Dispatcher event scheduling and handling procedures.
• The "translate unsigned" logic now correctly handles properly formatted (but unexpected) negative Counter64, Counter, Gauge, and TimeTick values.

RELEASE 4.0.1 JAN-01-2002

• SNMPv3 objects using authentication now send a separate authenticated request message for time synchronization while performing discovery.
• Non-blocking SNMPv1/2c messages with a "-delay" argument which are queued before entering the event loop are no longer incorrectly discarded.
• The Net::SNMP::Security::Community::security_model() method now returns the correct value as reserved by RFC 2571.
• The first subidentifier in an OBJECT IDENTIFIER is now restricted to ccitt(0), iso(1), or joint-iso-ccitt(2) as specified by ISO/IEC 8825.
• Changed the appropriate CHECK blocks into BEGIN blocks to avoid the "Can't call method 'send_pdu' on an undefined value" error when the module is loaded using a quoted eval statement.

RELEASE 4.0.0 NOV-09-2001

• The module has been completely redesigned to add support for SNMPv3 and to follow the SNMP Management Framework defined by RFC 2571.
• Perl version 5.6.0 or greater is now required to use the module.
• Updated the method calls to expect the same argument syntax regardless of whether they are invoked by "blocking" or "non-blocking" objects.
• The non-core modules Crypt::DES, Digest::MD5, Digest::SHA1, and Digest::HMAC are now required to support SNMPv3.
• Added the ability to specify the local address and port number used by each object.

RELEASE 3.65 SEP-09-2001

• Corrected an error in the Net::SNMP::FSM module that would cause all response messages to be dropped in "non-blocking" mode if there is a recv() error.
• Updated the logic in the "blocking" response handling method such the transmit buffer is properly updated if there is a decode error while parsing the GetResponse-PDU.
• Counter, Gauge, and TimeTick values that are incorrectly encoded as negative signed integers are now converted to unsigned values. This feature can be disabled by setting the "-unsigned" flag to false using the translate() method.
• An empty community name is now allowed.
• Updated the "non-blocking" example script.

RELEASE 3.60 SEP-09-2000

• Translation can now be enabled or disabled on a per ASN.1 type basis.
• The Net::SNMP::FSM "event loop" now prioritizes processing SNMP responses over other actions.
• A set of example scripts is now included with the distribution.

RELEASE 3.50 MAY-06-2000

• The methods that expect a SNMP GetResponse-PDU in "blocking" mode now ignore messages with request-ids that do not match the current request-id. This change addresses a common occurrence of the "Received request-id xxxx is not equal to transmitted request-id xxxx" error. The manifestation of this error that has been corrected occurs when a remote agent is too busy to respond immediately, buffers the request, and responds to the request after the Net::SNMP timeout has expired.
• A new argument "-delay" was added to all methods that can function in "nonblocking" mode.
• The Net::SNMP::FSM "event loop" sub-module was completely rewritten to more logically handle events.
• The get_table() method now uses get-bulk-requests instead of get-next-requests when the calling object's version is SNMPv2c.
• When a duplicate OBJECT IDENTIFIER is received in the VarBindList of a GetResponse-PDU, the duplicate is now padded with an appropriate number of spaces to make it an unique key in the HASH reference returned by the object.
• The default Maximum Transport Unit was changed from 484 to 1500. The minimum allow MTU is now 484.

RELEASE 3.01 JAN-01-2000

• Performance enhancements were made to the most heavily used methods.
• Changed the default timeout to 5.0 seconds and the default number of retries to 1 to reduce network traffic and to work around a problem with responses from certain routers when they are busy. The total default timeout period remains the same at 10 seconds.
• Removed the verify_ip() method and the "-verifyip" argument to the constructor.

RELEASE 3.00 SEP-09-1999

• Added event loop based "non-blocking" support.
• Deprecated the verify_ip() method because verification of the received IP address and port number is no longer done.
• The "null" character (\000) no longer triggers an OCTET STRING in a GetResponse-PDU to be converted to a hexadecimal representation if translation is enabled.
• A single socket is now used for all Net::SNMP objects.
• Corrected an error where a blocking session would send one too many retries and fail to listen for the last message sent.
• Added a new export tag ":snmp" used to define SNMP related symbols.
• New utility functions oid_context_match(), oid_lex_sort(), and ticks_to_time() were added to provide support for commonly requested tasks.
• The length of the varBind SEQUENCE is now properly encoded when multiple varBinds exist.

RELEASE 2.00 MAY-06-1999

• Added support for SNMPv2c (Community-Based SNMPv2).
• Modified the ASN.1 encode routine for INTEGERs to correctly handle positive values greater than 8388607.
• Added an installation test to verify basic usage of the module, including verification of basic encode and decode methods.

RELEASE 1.40 APR-26-1999

• All parameters for the object that used to be only configurable via an object method can now be modified at object creation by passing named arguments to the constructor.
• The translate() and debug() methods were modified to require a boolean argument to enable or disable the feature. This deprecates the toggle functionality they had previously.
• New method verify_ip() added that enables or disables the verification of the IP address and UDP port number on datagrams received by the object.
• Added support for decoding ASN.1 lengths encoded with 3 or 4 bytes.
• Installation tests for the modules required by Net::SNMP and for basic socket functionality were added to the distribution.

RELEASE 1.30 MAR-17-1999

• Modified the OBJECT INDENTIFIER decode method to return a leading dot on all identifiers if there was a leading dot on any OBJECT IDENTIFIER passed to the encode method.
• Changed the address comparison used when receiving an UDP packet to just include the port and address information in order to work around an AIX problem.

RELEASE 1.20 NOV-06-1998

• Now use gensym() from the Symbol module to generate typeglob references for socket handles, correcting a memory leak.
• All private methods renamed to Perl programming style recommendations.

RELEASE 1.10 OCT-14-1998

• New method trap() for sending SNMP Trap-PDUs added.
• New method error_status() which retrieves the SNMP error-status contained in the last SNMP GetResponse-PDU added.
• Named arguments for the method session() are now validated.
• New export tags ":asn1", ":generictrap", and ":ALL" added.
• New exportable symbols for generic-trap types added.
• A comma contained in an OCTET STRING no longer causes the decoded result of a GetResponse-PDU to be converted to a hexadecimal representation if translation is enabled.
• The control characters \n\r\t no longer trigger an OCTET STRING in a GetResponse-PDU to be converted to a hexadecimal representation if translation is enabled.

RELEASE 1.00 SEP-09-1998

• Initial release.

RCS

$Id: Changes,v 6.1 2010/09/10 00:01:22 dtown Rel $