Snmp shows error "snmpd dead but subsys locked"

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Hypervisor

Issue

  • When running service snmpd start there is no failure message, and service snmpd status returns with "snmpd dead but subsys locked"

Resolution

  • Removing the -v flag from /etc/sysconfig/snmpd resolves the issue

Root Cause

  • The snmpd service was configured in /etc/sysconfig/snmpd to run with the -v flag. This flag tells snmpd to print the version number and then exit.

Diagnostic Steps

  • Reviewing an strace from the system, we see that the service is running with the -v flag which tells it to exit after printing the version number:
25515 14:40:22.445810 open("/etc/sysconfig/snmpd", O_RDONLY) = 3
25515 14:40:22.445853 fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=112, ...}) = 0
25515 14:40:22.445905 read(3, "# snmpd command line options\n# OPTIONS=\"-LS0-6d -Lf /dev/null -p /var/run/snmpd.pid\"\nOPTIONS=\"-v -Lf /dev/null\"\n", 112) = 112
25515 14:40:22.445955 close(3)          = 0
  • Review /etc/sysconfig/snmpd:
$ cat etc/sysconfig/snmpd 
# snmpd command line options
# OPTIONS="-LS0-6d -Lf /dev/null -p /var/run/snmpd.pid"
OPTIONS="-v -Lf /dev/null"

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