Mastering Python Networking

Python script as an input source

There are two documents that we should read before we use our Python script as an input source:

• Data input methods: http://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/data_input_methods.html
• Making your scripts work with Cacti: http://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/making_scripts_work_with_cacti.html

One might wonder what are the use cases for using Python script as an extension for data inputs? One of the use cases would be to provide monitoring to resources that do not have a corresponding OID. Say, we would like to know how many times the access list permit_snmp has allowed the host 172.16.1.173 for conducting an SNMP query. We know we can see the number of matches via the CLI:

iosv-1#sh ip access-lists permit_snmp ...