Convert a MIB file to a Zabbix template¶

• Table of contents
• Convert a MIB file to a Zabbix template
  • Synopsis
  • Procedure
    • Install and configure SNMP tools
    • Install Perl and the mib2zabbix conversion script
    • (Original instructions) Use a single command to generate the Zabbix template XML file
    • Step by step Zabbix template XML file generation
      • Set environment variables with MIB file paths
      • Generate a list of OIDs
      • Generate the Zabbix template

Synopsis¶

Did you ever have to monitor a new device by SNMP? Do you have a MIB file that describes what that device can report, but you don't feel like translating that MIB by hand to Zabbix monitoring? Fear not, some hero has written a script that takes a MIB file and spits out a Zabbix template, ready for import!

Read on to find out how to do this.

Procedure¶

This guide is based on https://sbcode.net/zabbix/mib-to-zabbix-template/.

Install and configure SNMP tools¶

First, the SNMP tools and Perl SNMP library must be installed.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install snmp
sudo apt install snmp-mibs-downloader

yum check-update
yum install net-snmp-utils
yum install net-snmp-libs

To enable parsing of MIB files (it's disabled by default), edit /etc/snmp/snmp.conf and comment out the line "mibs" or "mibs :".

$ snmptranslate 1.3.6.1.2.1.1
SNMPv2-MIB::system

$ snmptranslate 1.3.6.1.2.1.1
iso.3.6.1.2.1.1

Install Perl and the mib2zabbix conversion script¶

The mib2zabbix.pl script is written in Perl, so we need to install it and some Perl modules that are used by the script.

apt-get install perl libxml-simple-perl libsnmp-perl

yum install "perl(SNMP)" "perl(XML::Simple)"

The mib2zabbix.pl script was originally written by someone else (https://github.com/zabbix-tools/mib2zabbix), but the last activity on that repo was in December 2017.
I have forked the project and made some improvements to the code, so it works without warnings on a modern version of Perl.

git clone https://github.com/sputtene/mib2zabbix.git
cd mib2zabbix

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sputtene/mib2zabbix/master/mib2zabbix.pl

Make the script executable:

chmod +x mib2zabbix.pl

Test it by showing the usage information:

$ ./mib2zabbix.pl --help
Usage:
    mib2zabbix.pl -o <OID> [OPTIONS]...

    Export loaded SNMP MIB OIDs to Zabbix Template XML

        -f, --filename=PATH         output filename (default: stdout)

        -N, --name=STRING           template name (default: OID label)
        -G, --group=STRING          template group (default: 'Templates')
        -e, --enable-items          enable all template items (default: disabled)

        -o, --oid=STRING            OID tree root to export

        -v, --snmpver=1|2|3         SNMP version (default: 2)
        -p, --port=PORT             SNMP UDP port number (default: 161)

    SNMP Version 1 or 2c specific

        -c, --community=STRING      SNMP community string (default: 'public')

    SNMP Version 3 specific

        -L, --level=LEVEL           security level (noAuthNoPriv|authNoPriv|authPriv)
        -n, --context=CONTEXT       context name
        -u, --username=USERNAME     security name
        -a, --auth=PROTOCOL         authentication protocol (MD5|SHA)
        -A, --authpass=PASSPHRASE   authentication protocol passphrase
        -x, --privacy=PROTOCOL      privacy protocol (DES|AES)
        -X, --privpass=PASSPHRASE   privacy passphrase

    Zabbix item configuration

        --check-delay=SECONDS       check interval in seconds (default: 60)
        --disc-delay=SECONDS        discovery interval in seconds (default: 3600)
        --history=DAYS              history retention in days (default: 7)
        --trends=DAYS               trends retention in days (default: 365)

        -h, --help                  print this message

If you see the usage information, everything is ok. If you get an error, make sure you installed all dependencies (SNMP tools and the Perl modules) in the previous steps.

(Original instructions) Use a single command to generate the Zabbix template XML file¶

From here on, the instructions on the original webpage and these instructions start to differ. The original instructions pipe the list of OIDs directly into the mib2zabbix script.

These instructions use multiple steps with explicit intermediate files; I found that much easier to debug the whole procedure.
Also, I had to do some extra stuff (like setting environment variables) to make it work; I have not tested the one-line command below, so I don't know if it works.

If you have a single MIB file that you want to convert to a Zabbix template, you might be successful using the one-liner on the original page:

snmptranslate -Tz -m ./HUAWEI-MIB.mib | ./mib2zabbix.pl -o .1.3.6.1.4.1 -f template-huawei-mib.xml -N huawei-mib

Change the name of your MIB file, the top-level OID you want to export from, the name of the output XML file and the template name in the above command according to your situation.

Step by step Zabbix template XML file generation¶

I have followed this step by step procedure.

Set environment variables with MIB file paths¶

To start, we must set some environment variables that will be used by the SNMP tools and the mib2zabbix script to determine which MIB files to load.

For the first step (generating a list of all OIDs) this is not strictly necessary, because we can specify the settings trough command line parameters (-m and -M parameters for the snmptranslate command). The mib2zabbix.pl doesn't provide command line switches for these settings though, so we must pass the configuration trough the environment or it will complain about missing MIB files.

In this example, I assume the MIB file(s) you want to convert to a Zabbix template are in the directory mib_files/.

Execute this in the shell that you will use to run all following commands:

export MIBS=ALL
export MIBDIRS="+mib_files/"

Pay attention to the + sign as the first character of the MIBDIRS value, it is important.

Generate a list of OIDs¶

First, we will generate a list of all OIDs known to the system (this includes the MIB-file(s) that we actually want to use for the Zabbix template, because of the environment variables that were just set).

Execute:

snmptranslate -Tz > all_oids.list

to generate a file all_oids.list in the correct format for mib2zabbix.pl.

Generate the Zabbix template¶

Finally, we can generate the Zabbix template. You need the top-level OID (SNMP agent and SNMP trapper items will be created for all entries in the OID subtree under this top-level OID); I'll use .1.3.6.1.4.1.6431 here as an example.

Execute:

./mib2zabbix.pl --name 'Example Template from MIB' --group 'Templates/Examples' --enable-items --check-delay=5m --disc-delay=1h --oid .1.3.6.1.4.1.6431.1 -f Example_template_from_MIB.xml < all_oids.list

Adjust parameter values as required. Pay special attention to the --enable-items parameter: without it, all items and discovery rules will be created disabled and that may not be what you want.

The file Example_template_from_MIB.xml can now be imported in Zabbix through Configuration → Templates and then the Import button in the top right.