Bug ID 2229805: Snmpd fails to restart after crash or watchdog abort when custom MIB child processes inherit network sockets

Last Modified: Mar 04, 2026

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP TMOS(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
17.5.0, 17.5.1, 17.5.1.2, 17.5.1.3, 17.5.1.4, 17.5.1.5

Opened: Feb 27, 2026

Severity: 3-Major

Symptoms

If a custom MIB OID is being serviced and snmpd crashes or is aborted snmpd can fail to restart. After crash or abort, snmpd continuously restarts with errors and cannot bind to port 161: Error: "Error opening specified endpoint tcp6:161"

Impact

SNMP monitoring unavailable until child processes terminate

Conditions

1. System using custom MIB OIDs that spawn child processes (via TCL exec) 2. Custom MIB scripts execute long-running commands (tmsh etc), and one of these custom MIB OIDs is being serviced. 3. snmpd crashes or is aborted by software watchdog after no heartbeat for 300s or more. This could happen on a system that is thrashing due to memory starvation for instance. 4. child processes still executing even though parent process snmpd has died.

Workaround

Identify processes holding port 161: ss -lnp | grep :161 lsof -i :161 Kill orphaned processes (not current snmpd PID): SNMPD_PID=$(pidof snmpd) ORPHANS=$(lsof -t -i :161 | grep -v "^${SNMPD_PID}$") kill -9 $ORPHANS Restart snmpd: bigstart restart snmpd

Fix Information

None

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips