Dave Shield wrote:
BROKEN MIBS ARE BROKEN! DON'T USE THEM! Get the current MIBs that come with the current NET-SNMP release.
In this particular situation, it's not the user's fault that the MIBs are broken.
Not always. The problem is also that many people have written MIB modules themselves as well which are not part of net-snmp or libsmi. Those people use for instance the PERL extension, they suddenly cannot work any more.
I indeed agree with the fact "BROKEN MIBS ARE BROKEN!", but those MIBs are used. I also beleive it would be good practise of them to fix their MIB modules, but will they really do?? I have seen MIB modules around for a long time which were even half SMIv1 and half SMIv2. When I mentioned this to them they did not care about it. It worked for them and probably there customers.
I believe we need to build in some flexibility that things will work regardless if the MIB module is broken (in the full sense). Of course it should recover those errors which it can and obvious mistakes. This is not so much a requirement for libsmi itself as used stand-alone, but it is (IMHO) a requirement for applications that embed libsmi. It brings the use of libsmi to another level, of not just checking the correctness of the MIB module.
Unfortenately, the disadvantage is that people can continue to make broken MIB modules, but the world is not perfect either.
Harrie