Setting up Zabbix on Debian Lenny to monitor Ubuntu Karmic

We need to fetch Zabbix 1.8 from the lenny-backports repository, so we edit /etc/apt/sources.list:

<snip>
deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free
deb-src http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free           
	

We don't want to upgrade all of our packages to the lenny-backports version, so we also create /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/80version:

APT::Default-Release "lenny";
	

Then we update the repository metadata cache, install the keys for the backports repository, and update once more:

Installing the Zabbix server

Debconf offers to use dbconfig-common to install the database. Use it, because otherwise the database will be created, but the tables will not.

Transferring the database to a separate host

The above installation brings in postgresql-8.1 (8.4?) as a dependency, which is already better than just installing zabbix-frontend-php and having mysql tagging along even though you answer “postgres” to the question which database you want. But in order to have the database on a database server, we need to transfer it manually. So we dump the database on the zabbix server:

... then we create the database on the database server:

Now we can state in /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf that

DBHost=dbserver.mydomain.com
DBName=zabbix
DBUser=zabbix
DBPassword=uioprehjdsnmc
	

... and in /etc/zabbix/dbconfig.php that:

$DB["TYPE"]      = "pgsql";
$DB["SERVER"]    = "dbserver.mydomain.com";
$DB["PORT"]      = "0";
$DB["DATABASE"]  = "zabbix";
$DB["USER"]      = "zabbix";
$DB["PASSWORD"]  = "uioprehjdsnmc";
$ZBX_SERVER      = "127.0.0.1";
$ZBX_SERVER_PORT = "10051";
	

For Zabbix to run without complaint, we also need in /etc/php5/conf.d/forZabbix.ini:

post_max_size = 50M;
upload_max_filesize = 50M;
mbstring.func_overload = 2;
	

And finally we restart the server and reload the GUI:

Configuring Zabbix

Now that Zabbix is running, we can make it show on the web with this in the Apache config:

Alias /zabbix/ "/usr/share/zabbix/"
<Directory "/usr/share/zabbix/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>
	

First thing to do is to log in on Zabbix with the default username “Admin” and its password “zabbix”. Once logged in, a new Super Admin account should be created, and impossible-to-guess passwords should be set on all Super Admin accounts including Admin.

Then, host groups should be made and discovery rules, and actions should be created that add hosts to these host groups as soon as they are discovered.

Configuring the client(s)

In /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agent.conf, the server must be mentioned, and we can set the maximum time per request (from the server) the client may spend on Zabbix:

Server=lwp23.service.rug.nl
Timeout=15
	

The Zabbix daemon that answers the requests from the server must also be configured, in /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf:

Server=zabbox.mydomain.com
Hostname=some.client.mydomain.com
<snip>
Timeout=15
	

And we must restart the daemon for the settings to take effect:

Leading Zabbix through the firewalls

On the client, ufw is running, so configuring is simple:

On the server, plain iptables is at work:

It may be necessary to restart the server after opening up the firewall.