My printer service is misconfigured

Last Modified

Thu Mar 30 15:27 GMT 2023

Description

N-able N-central offers various services that can monitor your SNMP-enabled printer. It can happen, from time to time, that your Printer service will turn to a Misconfigured state. The first and most important step is to take note of the specific error that is causing the misconfigured status.

Environment

  • N-able N-central 6.x and higher.

Solution

  • Various.

Any errors will be displayed on the Service's Details page. The error will always give you a good idea of the issue you are encountering. Some typical errors that will cause a Misconfigured status are:

  • 205 Device IP not reachable Generic errors SNMP++: SNMP request timed out
  • 201 Could not query primaryOID '1.3.6.1.4.1.x.x.x.x.x.x' SNMP: Variable does not exist

205 Device IP not reachable Generic errors SNMP++: SNMP request timed out

This is probably the most frequent error we encounter while monitoring any SNMP service. The error indicates that the monitoring probe for this service is not receiving a response to the SNMP query via port 161. The most common point of failure is a Firewall or the Probe being unable to reach the IP of the device. Verify all of your network settings are correct before proceeding.

If you have confirmed your Network settings are correct, the easiest way to troubleshoot this type of issue is to use Services such as Generic TCP (161) and SNMP to narrow the issue to Port, Network or Protocol issues.

201 Could not query primary OID '1.3.6.1.4.1.x.x.x.x.x.x' SNMP: Variable does not exist

The actual verbiage of the error can vary, but essentially the error states that it cannot find a variable that it is looking for. This means that although the Probe has received a response from the Device via SNMP, when it attempted to Query the specified OID for information nothing was returned. You'll want to gather information from the Service's Online Help page to try and find out where the service is looking (the OID).

Printer Services

Below are links to each of the Service's Online Help Pages with details on OID's used and Thresholds:

  1. Paper Supply Level Service
  2. Printer Conf Changes Service
  3. Printer Cover Status Service
  4. Printer Display Service
  5. Printer Page Count Service
  6. Probe Status Service
Steps to verify whether an OID is present and populated with Data
  1. To start, you will need a utility to perform SNMP Queries. For this example we advise the use of GetIF, which is free and available here. We must advise that this is a 3rd party software tool and N-able takes no responsibility for any negative impact this software may cause. Your discretion is advised.
  2. Once installed, open GetIF and enter the IP of the device you are monitoring. If you are running getIF directly on the device itself, enter the local IP or 127.0.0.1
  3. Please make sure that the read only community string listed in GetIF is the community string of the device you are trying to make a connection to.
  4. The SysDescr field should populate if a connection is made and should describe the system. (Processor and Operating system).
  5. Review DNS name and the system variable box beside the Start button for errors if a connection could not be made. The Read Community string will need to match the community string set on the device.
  6. Please review your Operating System's manual or online FAQ to enable SNMP and set a Read Only Community string on the device in which you would like to monitor.
  7. Click the MBrowser tab.
  8. Next, you'll need to paste the OID corresponding to the service you wish to monitor.
  9. You will need to paste the OID in the second field from the top (which by default has .1 entered).
  10. Once the OID is pasted in, (ensuring that it has the leading decimal), press enter. If the whole OID does not appear after pasting it, try again. It's not uncommon that this happens when using getIF.
  11. After pressing enter, information should appear in the larger field below where you paste the OID.
  12. If no values are returned, it means that the SNMP MIBS are not installed on the device and the OID you have entered does not extist. (For HP devices, these MIBS are installed as part of HP Insight Manager. For Dell devices, they're installed as part of the Dell OpenManage suite.)
  13. If the software is installed but the SNMP values are still not being returned, and you are sure that you are querying the correct OID, then you will need to contact the device manufacturer to troubleshoot why the MIBS were not installed with the software.
  14. Otherwise, each line returned represents an interface that was found, with a text description. This information shows the index as well.