Managing the Linux kernel with AgentX

Revision with unchanged content. Network management is essential for the operation and supervision of me-dium to large computer networks.

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is the standard protocol for network management in the Internet. Or-di-nary SNMP agents are mostly monolithic, run in the user-space and often poll information from the OS kernel.

This book examines to what extent the IETF standard sub-agent protocol AgentX is suitable for the management of UNIX/Linux kernel components.

For this purpose, AgentX sub-agents have been implemented inside the kernel subsystem they manage.

They use the AgentX protocol for communication with a master agent in user-space.

With this approach, kernel subsystems can be managed in an efficient and com-pre-hen-sive way.

The author describes the general design of this new in-kernel manage-ment architecture and its interface to the user-space.

As an example, two kernel sub-systems, namely the network interfaces and Linux Netfilter, are implemented as MIB modules and explained.

This book is intended for software developers of network and system ma-nage-ment solutions as well as researchers in this area.