Welcome to Easy SNMP

A blazingly fast and Pythonic SNMP library based on the official Net-SNMP bindings

Introduction

This is a fork of the official Net-SNMP Python Bindings but attempts to bring a more Pythonic interface to the library. Check out the Net-SNMP website for more information about SNMP.

This module provides a full featured SNMP client API supporting all dialects of the SNMP protocol.

Why Another Library?

  • The original Net-SNMP Python library is a great starting point but is quite un-Pythonic and lacks proper unit tests and documentation.
  • PySNMP is written in pure Python and therefore has a huge performance hit. In some brief tests, I estimate that both the Net-SNMP Python bindings and Easy SNMP are more than 4 times faster. Further to this, PySNMP has an even less Pythonic interface than the official Net-SNMP bindings.
  • Many other libraries like Snimpy are sadly based on PySNMP and so they suffer the same performance penalty.

Installation

EasySNMP has been tested and is supported on systems running Net-SNMP 5.7.x and newer. All non-EOL versions of Python 3 are fully supported, with 2.7 and recent EOL versions of Python 3 receiving partial support.

If your OS ships with a supported version of Net-SNMP, then you can install it without compiling it via your package manager:

On RHEL / CentOS systems:

sudo yum install net-snmp-devel

On Debian / Ubuntu systems:

sudo apt-get install libsnmp-dev snmp-mibs-downloader

On macOS systems:

brew install net-snmp

If your OS doesn’t ship with Net-SNMP 5.7.x or newer, please follow instructions provided on the Net-SNMP install page to build and install Net-SNMP on your system.

You’ll also need to ensure that you have the following packages installed so that Easy SNMP installs correctly:

On RHEL / CentOS systems:

sudo yum install gcc python-devel

On Debian / Ubuntu systems:

sudo apt-get install gcc python-dev

On macOS systems:

brew install gcc

Install Easy SNMP via pip as follows:

pip install easysnmp

Quick Start

There are primarily two ways you can use the Easy SNMP library.

The first is with the use of a Session object which is most suitable when you are planning on requesting multiple pieces of SNMP data from a source.

from easysnmp import Session

# Create an SNMP session to be used for all our requests
session = Session(hostname='localhost', community='public', version=2)

# You may retrieve an individual OID using an SNMP GET
location = session.get('sysLocation.0')

# You may also specify the OID as a tuple (name, index)
# Note: the index is specified as a string as it can be of other types than
# just a regular integer
contact = session.get(('sysContact', '0'))

# And of course, you may use the numeric OID too
description = session.get('.1.3.6.1.2.1.1.1.0')

# Set a variable using an SNMP SET
session.set('sysLocation.0', 'The SNMP Lab')

# Perform an SNMP walk
system_items = session.walk('system')

# Each returned item can be used normally as its related type (str or int)
# but also has several extended attributes with SNMP-specific information
for item in system_items:
    print '{oid}.{oid_index} {snmp_type} = {value}'.format(
        oid=item.oid,
        oid_index=item.oid_index,
        snmp_type=item.snmp_type,
        value=item.value
    )

You may also use Easy SNMP via its simple interface which is intended for one-off operations where you wish to specify all details in the request:

from easysnmp import snmp_get, snmp_set, snmp_walk

# Grab a single piece of information using an SNMP GET
snmp_get('sysDescr.0', hostname='localhost', community='public', version=1)

# Perform an SNMP SET to update data
snmp_set(
    'sysLocation.0', 'My Cool Place',
    hostname='localhost', community='public', version=1
)

# Perform an SNMP walk
snmp_walk('system', hostname='localhost', community='public', version=1)