[Info-vax] SMH (Re: Compaq Secure Web Server (Apache) problem)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-10-15 16:02:22 +0000, Craig A. Berry said:

> On 10/15/20 9:52 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 
>> Yeah, I'm not sure what to do with SMH, if you really need that. That's 
>> unlikely to be provided by VSI. VSI WebUI, maybe?
> 
> As far as I can see from the release notes (haven't tried it yet) WebUI 
> does not plug into any of the SNMP widgets that SMH does, so it really 
> doesn't fill the same function.  It's a software management facility 
> rather than a hardware monitoring facility.

IIRC, SMH is (was?) the home of part of the OpenVMS SNMP agent support, 
and not within OpenVMS nor TCP/IP Services. That SNMP agent 
implementation did shuffle around over time, though.

There's been little discussion of SNMP for a while too, and the OpenVMS 
support was SNMPv2 when last I checked. Which is insecure.

>> And again, there are  some wonderful SMH attacks available for versions 
>> as far back as OpenVMS is running.
> 
> SMH has performed wretchedly on VMS since it first became available, 
> and the security holes make running it dodgy, but I have yet to 
> encounter anything else that gives an easy overview of the hardware 
> health of the system.

Zabbix might be a remote-management option, and there is a Zabbix agent 
port around for OpenVMS.

> There is/was that thing from HPE that requires the purchase of an extra 
> Windows server in order to monitor the VMS server, but that's not 
> something that could happen where I live.

Yeah, that all pre-dated HP, as well as  HPE. Compaq was fond of 
requiring a Windows system for various purposes, too. The expectation 
of a Windows system for AlphaServer GS1280 management was certainly 
controversial.

I'd expect the developers implementing the monitoring and remote 
management and fault management support preferred to offer one SNMP 
manager with one display UI app.  That for Windows. With SNMP agents 
elsewhere.


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