Configuring SNMP fails with the error: Agent not responding, connect uds socket failed

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot configure SNMP using CLI or esxcli
• Configuring SNMP using CLI or esxcli fails
• You see the error:
  
  Agent not responding, connect uds socket(/var/run/snmp.ctl) failed 2, err= No such file or directory
  
  
• In the strace of snmpd, you see an error similar to:
  
  open("/vmfs/volumes/4b8e7c33-0948b0dc-a04d-001b7857e5c2", O_RDONLY|O_NOCTTY) = 4
  trace: ptrace(PTRACE_SYSCALL, ...): No such file or directory

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

Cause

This issue occurs if the custom scratch location is missing in the ESXi host.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, either create the directory for the scratch according to the scratch config settings in advanced settings of the host or set the scratch location to a valid location and then reboot the host.

Sample commands to set up SNMP via esxcli

esxcli system snmp set -r

esxcli system snmp set -e false

esxcli system snmp set --communities public

esxcli system snmp set --targets 10.0.3.100@162/public

esxcli system snmp set -l debug

esxcli system snmp set -e true

snmpd start

esxcli system snmp test