Forum Discussion

Nate_Amsden's avatar
Nate_Amsden
10 years ago

set descriptions via API

I would like to input descriptions for the network ports on my switches (I don\'t see a way to do this on the switch side) however if I do this then when auto discovery runs again it wipes those values out.

Is there some api or method I could use to automatically re populate these values? If I turn off automatic discovery can I still manually trigger it on demand? Our switch configurations change maybe once or twice a year at this point.

Or perhaps change the method of auto discovery, I am not certain which complete OIDs are being queried but if I (or you) could extract a list of OIDs for the ports discovery I could change the discovery method to be http and to pull a text file from a server which has the descriptions and values to query for the ports.

On that note I know I can clone data sources, is there a way to clone a data source, and \'\'move\'\' the existing data into it or do I lose all the data if I want to use a new data source (with a new AD method because I don\'t want to impact anything but the switches) even though the underlying data source is identical.

  • Steve_Francis's avatar
    Steve_Francis
    Former Employee
    10 years ago

    There is nor currently an API call to update instance descriptions - but if you just want to stop them from being removed automatically, thats easy enough.rnJust edit the datasource and remove the OID from the description field.rnThen you can manually edit the instance descriptions, and they will never be wiped out.rn(Of course this means that if you do have switches that do support interface descriptions - those will not be pulled in.)

  • Nate_Amsden's avatar
    Nate_Amsden
    10 years ago

    ok great thanks that will work for mern(did you move this request to a feature? I went looking for it in the support page but didnt see it anymore)

  • Nate_Amsden's avatar
    Nate_Amsden
    10 years ago

    I removed the OID from the description field in active discovery and saved the data source - then I put a few manual changes in and forced active discovery to run - my changes were wiped outrnPerhaps I removed the wrong thing? I am editing the snmp64_If- data source which is what is being used by the switch.