User's Manual

166 Mercury Reference Manual 05-4446A01, Rev. C

Admin accounts: context_a/Viewer accounts: context_v.

All accounts share the same default passwords:

Authentication default password:

MDSAuthPwd/Privacy default pass-

word:

MDSPrivPwd.

Passwords can be changed either locally (via the console) or from an

SNMP Manager, depending on how the Agent is configured. If pass-

words are configured and managed locally, they are non-volatile and

will survive a power-cycle. If passwords are configured from an SNMP

manager, they will be reset to whatever has been stored for local man-

agement on power-cycle.

This behavior was chosen based on RFC specifications. The SNMP

Manager and Agent do not exchange passwords, but actually exchange

keys based on passwords. If the Manager changes the Agents password,

the Agent does not know the new password. The Agent only knows the

new key. In this case, only the Manager knows the new password. This

could cause problems if the Manager loses the password. If that hap-

pens, the Agent becomes unmanageable. Resetting the Agents pass-

words (and therefore keys) to what is stored in flash memory upon

power-cycle prevents the serious problem of losing the Agents pass-

words.

If passwords are managed locally, they can be changed on the Agent (via

the console). Any attempts to change the passwords for the Agent via an

SNMP Manager will fail when the Agent is in this mode. Locally

defined passwords will survive a power-cycle.

In either case, the SNMP Manager needs to know the initial passwords

being used in order to talk to the Agent. If the Agents passwords are

configured via the Manager, they can be changed from the Manager. If

the passwords are managed locally, then the Manager must be re-con-

figured with any password changes in order to continue talking to the

Agent.

Password-Mode Management Changes

When the password management mode is changed, the active passwords

used by the Agent may also change. Some common scenarios are dis-

cussed below:

Common Scenarios ¥ Passwords are currently being handled by the Manager. The

assigned passwords are

Microwave (Auth), and Rochester (Priv).

Configuration is changed to manage the passwords locally. The

passwords stored on the radio were Fairport (Auth), and

Churchville (Priv) (if local passwords have never been used,

then MDSAuthPwd and MDSPrivPwd are used). These pass-

words will now be used by the Agent to re-generate keys. The

Manager must know these passwords to talk to the Agent.