Subject: snmpconf to-do lists - deadline April 6

From: David Partain <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 14:18:00 +0200

Greetings,

For those of you unable to be with us last week, we can
report that we had two very productive sessions.  We now
believe that we are on the downhill slope to completion of
the three documents.  Minutes of the meeting will be appearing
Real Soon Now.

At last week's meeting, it was agreed that we would try to
compile the "complete" to-do list for the three documents by
April 6 (this year :-)).  In order to do so, we need your help.

Firstly, the current list of unfinished business is below. It
is made up of unfinished items from the list published Jan 12
plus items decided upon during the working group meeting.

Now, you have your chance.  Please look through the list
and verify that those things that you want addressed are on
the list.  If not, please submit your issue to this mailing
list _no later_ than April 6.

Note that submitting an item does not automatically mean
it'll get done.  As the proponent of change, the onus is on
you to convince the working group of the necessity of your
proposed change.  Also, you don't have to propose a solution,
merely convince the group that there's a problem to solve.

Cheers,

Jon & David

                   Current To-do List
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Policy MIB Module

 #01 Language versioning

     Issue:  Wes Hardaker raised his concern that we need to have
     mechanisms in place for dealing with future revisions to the
     language given the fact that it's very unlikely that we'll
     never update the language.  He will work with Steve
     Waldbusser on this.

 #02 Bob Moore's questions

     Issue:  on March 14, Bob Moore published mail with the
     subject "Policy MIB: assorted other comments".  There are a
     number of questions/comments in that mail that need to be
     addressed.

 #03 Policy failure and fallback

     Issue:  if you have multiple policies running at different
     levels of precedence, how do you fallback to a policy of
     lower precedence if the one at a higher level fails.  Steve
     Waldbusser had a proposal, which he will work on more with
     Wes Hardaker and publish to the mailing list.

 #04 Code Reuse

     Issue:  Wes Hardaker believes that some things should be
     done to aid in code re-use.  He will publish any proposals
     to the mailing list.

 #05 Question of notifications and controls for their generation
     wrt policy failure.

     Issue:  should notifications be sent when a policy fails?
     If so, what mechanisms should be used to control their
     generation?  (If I remember correctly,) Wes will work on a
     proposal.

 #06 counter32Delta and counterRate review and discussion

     Issue:  When Steve presented counter32Delta and counterRate,
     there was a fair bit of discussion on whether they were
     right as they are.  More thought and discussion is required.

 #07 Dave H. asked for enabled versus admin status for
     pmPolicyAdminStatus

     Issue:  David Harrington thinks that the object
     pmPolicyAdminStatus might be confusing given its similarity
     to ifAdminStatus (but the enums are different).  He
     suggested changing it to pmPolicyEnabledStatus.

 #08 Should we create a create API versus a specific createAndGo
     and a specific createAndWait

     Issue:  at the previous IETF, discussion began having an API
     that could use the createAndGo paradigm of RowStatus rather
     than createAndWait.  Steve Waldbusser presented a proposal
     for what this might look like.  Subsequent discussion
     centered on the idea of having a _single_ API that works for
     both createAndGo and createAndWait but hides which it uses
     from the caller.  Given that we have two and might soon have
     three (the EOS WG is also looking at this issue), such an
     API would be useful.

     Steve will receive assistance from Randy Presuhn and Wes H.
     on this.

 #09 Discussion of permanent storage and configuration update
     implications of the Policy Module on the rest of the system

     Issue:  in DiffServ MIB discussions, the use of
     the StorageType TC has been called into question.
     Specifically, implementors said that the granularity used
     in the DiffServ MIB (storage per row) was not realistic in
     an environment where flash was used.  We need to look at
     how we use StorageType to determine if it's appropriate
     for such environments or if we need to come up with an
     alternative approach (perhaps a "bigger button" at a
     higher level of granularity).

 #10 setCli example needs to be written

     Issue:  given the rules outlined in section 8 (Accessor
     Functions) and section 9 (Base Accessor Function Library),
     David Partain and Chris Elliot (and any others) will write
     an example of how a vendor might add its own setCli accessor
     function.

 #11 Helper objects for network management system fall over.

     Issue:  do we need some way of guiding the fallover from one
     management system to another?  Steve Waldbusser brought this
     up long ago and he will either let this drop or will publish
     a proposal.

 #12 Taxonomy discussion updates to be in BCP referenced in
     PM Document.

     Issue:  the BCP has a discussion of the taxonomy (to
     be updated).  A non-normative reference to this needs to
     be added to the PM module.

     Jon will offer a proposal.

 #13 Notification Registration Table.

     Issue:  why isn't the SNMPv3 infrastructure sufficient for
     our needs?  Steve Waldbusser will publish his reason.

 #14 Text on resource usage and clean up.

     Issue:  although resource usage is largely an implementation
     issue, there are some things that we need to do to help.
     In particular, Steve Waldbusser noted the problem of
     cleaning up fully-created rows when scripts terminate
     abnormally.  He suggested a registration mechanism for rows.
     Steve will present this more fully.

     In general, the text needs to be gone over with an eye to
     resource usage.

 #15 Relationship to other MIB Modules

     Issue:  some text needs to be written explaining what the
     relationship is between this document and other MIBs.
     Basically, it would say that the scripts operate on MIB
     variables defined in other MIBs.

     Jon will offer a proposal.

 #16 Table indexing on pmRoleTable

     Issues:  the IMPLIED keyword serves no useful purpose in
     this case and will be removed.  Secondly, the index can
     become larger than the 128 subidentifier limit set by the
     SMI.  Consequently, the indexing needs to be re-examined.

 #17 The security question(s)

     Issue:  is the current security model sufficient?
     It states:

     "When executing this action, if SNMP requests are made to
     the local system, access to objects is under the security
     credentials of the the requester who modified the most
     recently modified pmPolicyCodeEntry associated with either
     the pmPolicyFilter value or pmPolicyAction value. In other
     words, modification of any part of a policy's filter or
     action will change the credentials stored for the policy."

     Should we consider adding an OwnerString?  Some thoughts
     from Wes H and Randy Presuhn in this regard would be very
     helpful.

 #18 Update capabilities table as per suggestion and add new
     read-write override table

     Issue:  the capabilities table appeared to offer severe
     challenges to implementors.  So, after much discussion,
     the following was proposed:

     pmCapabilitiesSubType
     PmCapabilitiesModificationOID
     pmCapabilitiesModificationType
     PmCapabilitiesModificationValue
     PmCapabilitiesModificationString

     will all be removed, leaving only pmCapabilitiesIndex and
     pmCapabilitiesType.  The table will be read-only and will be
     populated "automatically" by the agent system.  That which
     is put into the table will be (1) OIDs from a list of
     registered OIDs as suggested by Steve W in mail prior to the
     meeting, (2) an OID representing a conformance level with
     respect to a MIB module, or (3) the base OID of the MIB
     module itself.

     Secondly, a new read-create table will be added called the
     pmCapabilitiesOverrideTable.  This will be essentially
     the same as pmCapabilitiesTable with: Valid or Invalid
     state object, and a RowStatus object.  This will:

      - Allow for manager correction of 'false negative' and
        'false positive' reports by the agents registering
        their capabilities.

      - Allows manager to turn off a capability.

      - Always survives across reboots and entries in this table
        'trump' pmCapabilitiesTable.

     Jon will send a specific proposal for change.

 #19 Removal of scratchpad variables

     Issue:  sometimes you want to clean the slate prior to
     using scratchpad variables.  Steve Waldbusser presented
     a proposal at the meeting, which he will propose to the
     mailing list.

 #20 Scheduling of policies

     Issues:  after input from Bob Moore, we no longer believe
     that our schedule table is the best way to accomplish what
     we want.  Steve W. suggested using the scheduling semantics
     in the PCIM (policy core info model) done in the policy
     framework WG.  A specific proposal will be given by Steve.

 #21 Examples throughout language discussion

     Issue:  David Partain believes there are many places where
     simple examples would be helpful in understanding language
     constructs, MIB objects, etc.  He will propose these to the
     editors of the document.

 #22 Editorial Review

     Issue:  as we are rapidly approaching finalization of the
     document, NOW is a very good time for all to read the
     document and get their comments to the list.

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BCP

 #01 The taxonomy discussion needs to be updated if comments are
     received.

 #02 Correct any remaining technical errors

     Issues:

     - On some items, improve guidance 
      * overlapping controls
      * fate sharing on read-create tables
     - Agent/X considerations
     - Protocol details - Wes & Bert's comments  
     - Improve Set Latency Example

 #03 Correct remaining prose

 #04 Finish off MIB Module

     Issue:  there have been a number of comments on the example
     MIB module included in the document.  These issues need to
     be addressed.

     - DisplayString vs SnmpAdminString
     - Bob Moore's items
      * Notifications
      * Compliances
      * Agent Caps

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DiffServ Policy MIB

 #01 Synchronization with the DiffServ MIB

     Issue:  the DiffServ MIB is going to be re-published
     shortly.  At that time, the DiffServ Policy MIB will need to
     by sync'ed with that document.

 #02 Cloning issues

     Issue:  Once the DiffServ MIB has been published, we
     hopefully will know how they intend to deal with cloning of
     templates.  We may need to add objects to our MIB to do
     things the right way.

 #03 Example cleanup/additions

     Issues:  the example may need some work, and there might be
     good reason to add another example, including policy script
     examples.

 #04 Name of MIB

     Issue:  Should this rightfully be called the DiffServ
     Policy MIB or DiffServ Configuration MIB or something else?

     David Partain will offer a proposal.

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