I/G/D/C/B/A-Series Support for Leading Exclamation Point in SNMP Passwords

FAQ_User — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 06:02:00 GMT

Article ID: 15110

Products
I-Series, all firmware
G-Series, all firmware
D-Series, all firmware
C5, C3, C2-Series; all firmware
B5, B3, B2-Series; all firmware
A4, A2-Series; all firmware

Changes
Attempting to use an Exclamation Point / Bang character as the first byte of an SNMPv3 user password; for example:
set snmp user myUser privacy !myPrivPass authentication md5 !myAuthPass

Symptoms
The command editor issues one or more error messages, depending on product and firmware version:
Error: Missing value for "remote".
Error, password string is invalid.
Error, you can't set privacy without setting authentication.
Passwords should neither start with '!' character nor should be NULL.

Cause
All of the characters after the "!" are being treated as a comment, rendering the command incomplete.

Solution/Workaround
Functions as Designed (FAD).

Include single or double quotes around such a password in order to properly delimit it; for example:
set snmp user myUser privacy '!myPrivPass' authentication md5 "!myAuthPass"

Note that this is a CLI requirement only. Adding quotation marks is not necessary (or acceptable) when using a MIB manipulation tool.
See also: 12380.

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I/G/D/C/B/A-Series Support for Leading Exclamation Point in SNMP Passwords