So after coming back from holiday’s the only box that was on my network was my Linux router/server/firewall. In powering up all the other Windows machines two of them came back online ok and started reporting graphs, but my main Windows box didn’t. The error when I went into Cacti Admin > Console > Devices > The Device was: SNMP Error right under the upper left corner of the window under SNMP Information.

The first thing that I went to check was under Control Panels > Administrative Tools > Services and verified that the SNMP Service and SNMP Trap were both set to automatically start, and are both running. I went in to check the configuration of the SNMP service and the IP address that it was set to report to is correct and the community is fine.

So to break through all the walls here, the first test that you should run is:

snmpwalk -Os -c public -v 1 xxx.xxx.xxx.xx system

Replace the XXX’s with the actual internal IP address. Now what’s interesting for me is that my main box has two NIC’s on it; 192.168.1.8 and 192.168.1.20. When I ran the test against the first IP address, I received the below error:

george@otani:~$ snmpwalk -Os -c public -v 1 192.168.1.8 system
Timeout: No Response from 192.168.1.8

But when I ran it against the 192.168.1.20 IP, I received a response:

george@otani:~$ snmpwalk -Os -c public -v 1 192.168.1.20 system
sysDescr.0 = STRING: Hardware: x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 11 AT/AT COMPATIBLE – Software: Windows Version 6.0 (Build 6001 Multiprocessor Free)
sysObjectID.0 = OID: enterprises.311.1.1.3.1.1
sysUpTimeInstance = Timeticks: (216315) 0:36:03.15
sysContact.0 = STRING:
sysName.0 = STRING: COMPUTERNAME
sysLocation.0 = STRING:
sysServices.0 = INTEGER: 76

This boils down to a firewall or some sort of block that is causing this error. If you don’t have two NIC’s, start with troubleshooting it at the local firewall level or at your router level. But changing the device IP from 192.168.1.8 to 192.168.1.20, I received the following within Cacti:

GEORGE-INTEL-DESKTOP (192.168.1.20) SNMP Information
System: Hardware: x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 11 AT/AT COMPATIBLE – Software: Windows Version 6.0 (Build 6001 Multiprocessor Free)
Uptime: 218222 (0 days, 0 hours, 36 minutes)
Hostname: COMPUTERNAME
Location:
Contact: