This is a known problem with snmpd on 4.3.3.  You need to get the fix to
snmpd  provided by APAR IY12532.

If you search the archives you will find a posting by Leslie Clark
(12/05/2000) entitled "[NV-L] Re: Briefing:AIX snmpd fails set with error
status 4" which provides a technical update she got from NetView Level 2's
George de Socio (their technical lead) explaining what happened here.

Some time during the early life of 4.3.3 someone convinced AIX that
allowing snmpsets was a bad idea because it allowed a non-root user to
change a config file, so they effectively broke SNMP  by allowing only
trusted users to do it.
This APAR fix provides a way to turn off the snmpd security if desired.

With that update to the snmpd daemon, a startup parameter of -U can be used
to turn off snmpd security.  The disablement is implemented in
bos.net.tcp.client.4.3.3.21


James Shanks
Team Leader, Level 3 Support
 Tivoli NetView for UNIX and NT



"Geoffrey Cheng/Markham/IBM" <gcheng AT CA.IBM DOT COM>@tkg.com on 03/23/2001
02:18:31 PM

Please respond to IBM NetView Discussion <nv-l AT tkg DOT com>

Sent by:  owner-nv-l AT tkg DOT com


To:   nv-l AT tkg DOT com
cc:
Subject:  [NV-L] snmpset problm on AIX 4.3.3



Hi,

     Has anyone ever used "snmpset" agaist snmp agent (snmpd) running
     on AIX 4.3.3? I ran through a couple of tests and find out no matter
how
     I configure my /etc/snmpd.conf, when I tried the command like the
followings:

     # snmpset -c ReadWriteCommunity MyAIXBox system.sysContact.0 \
     octetstringascii "operator"

     it returns me:

     snmpset: This variable is read only.

     I don't have such problem on AIX 4.2.1 and I'm sure the
/etc/snmpd.conf
     is configured corrected and refreshed timely.

     Has anyone met the same situation? Thanks.

Best Regards,

Geoffrey Cheng
Senior I/T Specialist/Architect
Certified Tivoli Enterprise Consultant & Instructor
ITS, IBM Global Services
Tel:(905)-316-5820 Fax: (905)-316-4525
Email: gcheng AT ca.ibm DOT com

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