Re: smilint remembers named number in OID value assignment (fwd)

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

Greetings,

Learned comments on the following would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike Heard

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 08:56:11 +0100
From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <j.schoenwaelder@iu-bremen.de>
To: C. M. Heard <heard@pobox.com>
Cc: Frank Strauss <strauss@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>
Subject: Re: smilint remembers named number in OID value assignment

On Sat, Nov 27, 2004 at 09:22:03AM -0800, C. M. Heard wrote:
 
> In parsing the attached MIB module smilint appears treat the
> following expressions as defining the symbol snmpDot3MauMgt:
> 
>      ianaMauTC MODULE-IDENTITY  
>        [ ... ]
>        ::= { mib-2 snmpDot3MauMgt(26) 7 } -- mauMod+1
> 
>                 .
>                 .
>                 .
> 
>      dot3MauType OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { mib-2 snmpDot3MauMgt(26) 4 }
> 
> and as a result complains about the second one (see attached e-mail
> robot output).
> 
> As I understand it, the names associated with these "named number"
> constructions are supposed to be local to the OID assignment and not
> known outside that scope -- at least that's how it works in ASN.1,
> from which these constructs were inherited.  In effect, the name
> attached to the number in these constructs is nothing more than a
> comment.

Frankly, I do not really know what the rule is here. If the name is
truely local to the assignment, then it has no purpose at all since
you hardly can reference the name. Obviously, libsmi does not treat
this as purely local. I guess the best thing would be to raise this
question on the mibs mailing list to see whether there is concensus
how this is actually supposed to work.

Regarding the MIB that triggered your email: I think this MIB module
should be registered directly below mib-2 anyway.
 
/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder		    International University Bremen
<http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/>	    P.O. Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany