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Excessive logging for SNMP in the ESX host messages log

Symptoms

/var/log/messages contains excessive messages similar to:

<Date><Time> <Server> snmpd[xxxxx]: Received SNMP packet(s) from UDP: [127.0.0.1]:xxxxx

Resolution

This is expected behavior and is normal for a default installation of RedHat Net-SNMP that is installed on ESX hosts. The agent is configured for this level of logging as a security measure.

Note: VMware vSphere 4.0 no longer supports Net‐SNMP. You can still use Net‐SNMP with ESX 4.0 if your management agent requires it.ESX 4.0 includes a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent that is embedded in hostd. For more information see Configuring the Net-SNMP Agent on ESX Hosts.

Although VMware does not recommend changing the default logging level, you can avoid this excessive logging.

To avoid excessive logging:

Log in to the ESX host service console as the root user.
Open the /etc/init.d/snmpd file in a text editor.
The OPTIONS line needs to be modified. Depending on the version of the ESX host, the OPTIONS line looks like:

OPTIONS="-s -l /dev/null -P /var/run/snmpd -a"

or

OPTIONS="-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -p /var/run/snmpd.pid -a"

Remove the -a so the line looks like:

OPTIONS="-s -l /dev/null -P /var/run/snmpd.pid"

or

OPTIONS="-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -p /var/run/snmpd.pid"
Restart the snmpd service by running the command:

service snmpd restart

Update History

01/13/2010 - Added ESX 4.1 to Products

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