Template:FAQ:Applications 07
There are three basic possibilities:
- the agent has crashed
- it is hanging
- it is temporarily overloaded
Detecting whether the agent has crashed should be fairly straighforward. If you can reliably reproduce this crash (e.g. by sending a particular SNMP request), then contact the coders list for advice. It's the other two cases that are probably more significant.
To tell the difference between these two, try leaving the agent
undisturbed for a while, and then probe it using a single 'snmpget'
request, specifying a longer timeout (e.g. '-t 120'). If it now
responds, then something was probably sending requests (including
duplicate retries) faster than the agent could process them, and it
was building up a backlog. Try adjusting the timeout period and retry
frequency of these client requests, or look at improving the efficiency
of the implementation of the relevant MIB objects.
If the agent remains unresponsive (particularly if the load on the system is steadily climbing), then it's probably hanging, and all you can really do is restart the agent. If you can identify what causes this to happen, then contact the coders list for advice.
