This software is freely distributable under the GNU public license, a
copy of which you should have received with this software (in a file
called COPYING). 


Welcome to SMB_SNMP !
=====================

SMB_SNMP is an extension to the popular Samba
[http://samba.anu.edu.au/] system. It basically allows people to see
SNMP agents as shared Windows resources. MIB variables are mapped to
text files, whereas SNMP tables are mapped to 1) text files, 2) HTML
files, and 3) SLK files in order to make them readable using text
editors, web browsers and spreadsheets.

SNMP agents can be mounted from Windows/DOS and browsed using DOS
commands (cd, dir..). Whenever a variable is read/modified a SNMP
get/set is issued transparently to the remote SNMP agent. This allows
people to manage SNMP resource without any specialised software. SNMP
traps are sent by dropping files (for instance from Windows Explorer)
in a special SMB_SNMP folder called sendTraps.



Why Samba?
==========

Although the principle behind SMB_SNMP could be implemented in many
different ways (using NFS or Netatalk for instance), Samba has been
preferred because:

- it is known to be very stable and portable

- it provides facilities such as smbfs that allows system
  administrator to mount (on Linux) SMB file systems and then to
  re-export them via NFS or Netatalk

- (unfortunately) Windows is one of the most widely used OS and then
  SMB_SNMP can be deployed by a large number of people



What is Desktop-based Management ?
==================================











