Disman Minutes
Reported by Steve Waldbusser
Munich 8/11/97
 
 
Agenda
    1.  Administrativia
    2.  Technical Presentations (none offered)
    3.  Discussion
        SNMPv3
        Framework
        Target MIB
        Expression MIB
        Script MIB
        Notification MIB
        Common Issues
    4.  Future Work
    5.  Closing
        Action Items
        Interim Meeting
        Next Meeting

Status of new Charter
    It is ready to go forward through the IESG process

Note it was mentioned that there are new requirements for IETF
specifications that the document editors need to conform to for our
work (standard ops guide changes for security and
internationalization)

Framework issues

Due to SNMPv3, the framework document  needs to change. Specifically
much of the notification work has become part of the SNMPv3 framework.
The Target MIB may also need to be updated or deleted. Andy Bierman
will review the target MIB to see what changes might be warranted.


There was some discussion about the additional framework issue of
delegation of authority.  There were three options discussed:
1.  Disman functions run with the authority of the disman system
2.  Disman functions have security "tokens" downloaded along with the "script"
3.  Disman functions have security "tokens" downloaded along with the
    "script", as well as the ability to have setuid priveleges

    The discussion that ensued preferred option #2 over #1.

Filtering, transmission, and logging were identified as the three
notification functions. Steve Waldbusser  mentioned 2 event-related
issues that Bob Stewart and David Levy agreed to bring up in the
SNMPv3 group:
    1. If a notification is duplicated by the network, there is no
       way for the receiving application to tell that 2 events did
       not occur.
    2. If an application wants to send a notification that
       contains more varbinds than can fit in a PDU, there is no
       way to associate the multiple PDUs that result so it
       is clear that they are part of the same transaction.

There was some discussion about the conflict between our common usage
of the term "application" and the new SNMPv3 usage of that term. This
is particularly problematic in the disman group because we talk about
applications a lot.

Bob Stewart mentioned that Cisco is implementing the Expression MIB.
The experience to date is that  it is somewhat complicated. Bob will
report back more experience and believes that in about 2 months he can
revise the Expression MIB.

The Script MIB needs to be updated to deal with naming WRT the issue
of delegation of authority. Other issues need to be handled as well.
Juergen believes he can get a revised draft out in September (before
the draft expires).

There was some discussion on the multiple ways of handling scheduling
of disman apps (e.g., event-driven, scheduled). This is still an
unsolved issue.

There was a lot of discussion about the lack of a common language for
the script MIB causing interoroperability problems. Jon Curran
suggested that if we can't choose one, maybe we can choose a language
of last resort. The discussion of narrowing the list of potential
languages to a short list (hopefully one) was deferred to informal
discussions during the course of the IETF meeting.

There was some discussion about the fact that in the current framework
that IPv6 addresses are not supported as targets. It was generally
agreed that this needs to be fixed.
 
There was discussion about the use of IMPLIED in the framework MIB and
the fact that v1 compilers will not understand it. Once it was
recognized that this is not a problem for using SNMPv1 PDUs (only v1
MIB compilers) the group agreed to keep using IMPLIED where appropriate.

The group agreed to switch all DisplayStrings in the DisMan MIBs to
UTF8 format.

Futures

The group agreed to have an interim meeting, possibly combined with
the SNMPv3 interim meeting, and also to reserve 2 slots at the next
IETF meeting.