MIB Designer FAQ ================ If you do not find an answer to your question here, then you might also want to check out: http://www.mibdesigner.com/html/mibdesign.html and the MIB Designer PDF manual in the installation directory. Q: Why does MIB Designer refuse to compile MIB modules containing ASN.1 MACRO definitions like the RFC1155-MIB, SNMPv2-SMI, SNMPv2-CONF, or SNMPv2-TC modules? A: ASN.1 MACROS are *not* part of the SMIv1/v2 languages. MACROS are used to define the SMI language with ASN.1 syntax. Thus, the modules above have to be treated as non-compliant to the SMI rules. In order to make them compliant one has to remove all MACROs from the modules. MIB Designer has built-in versions of these MIB modules, so there is no need to compile those MIB modules. Q: MIB Designer does not allow sub-typing in SEQUENCE constructs, why? The following SEQUENCE { Integer32 (1..65535), causes a 'Syntax error: Encountered: "(" at line nnn, column 23: Was expecting one of: "}" ... "," ...' A: SMIv2 does not allow sub-typing in SEQUENCE constructs, see RFC2578 §7.1.12 for details. Q: What could be the cause for the following error? Syntax error: Encountered: "abc MODULE-IDENTITY" at line nnn, column 1: Was expecting one of: "OBJECT-TYPE" ... "TRAP-TYPE" ... ... ... "Gauge32" ... "Unsigned32" ... "UInteger32" ... "Integer32" ... "Counter64" ... "Counter32" ... . A: SMIv2 requires that a MIB module does contain exactly one MODULE-IDENTITY construct immediately following the IMPORTS statement. In the above case, another construct (e.g. OBJECT IDENTIFIER) preceeds the MODULE-IDENTITY statement. Q: Why does MIB Designer not compile all MIB modules found in rfcmibs.zip of other collections of IETF MIBs? A: MIB Designer has a very strict MIB compiler that enforces correct SMI syntax. Many other MIB compilers are no able to provide the same level of error detection. That's why there are still MIB modules written that contain syntax errors and there are also some (older) IETF MIB modules that contain syntax errors.