See the installation section for full details.

Older agents from Zabbix 1.0, Zabbix 1.1.x, Zabbix 1.4.x and Zabbix 1.6.x can be used with Zabbix 1.8. It does not require any configuration changes on agent side.

• All hosts now are required to belong to at least one group.
• CPU index for system.cpu.util key on Linux now starts with 0.
• Key vfs.fs.size returns data in bytes for all operating systems now.
• Key vfs.fs.size now takes into account reserved diskspace for root user.
• Comment at the end of a configuration file line is not allowed anymore (this worked for numeric parameters only before).

Additional or increased system requirements:

• Support for PHP 4 dropped.
• Maximal PHP memory size should be at least 128MB (option memory_limit).
• Maximal PHP POST size should be at least 16MB (option post_max_size).

• PHP mbstring check may fail with PHP < 5.2 in Zabbix 1.8. To avoid this issue, copy zabbix.conf.php.example file to zabbix.conf.php and modify parameters, including database access parameters.
• For IPMI support you need a recent OpenIPMI version - 2.0.13 and later is known to work.
• Sorting in frontend is not performed for entities with positional variables (like item names with $1 etc).
• XML export includes SNMP and other information for all items.
• Hostnames with spaces do not work when sending data from a file with zabbix_sender.
• Uploading of images for network maps may fail if database is not configured properly. Make sure database, tables and fields are set to UTF-8 encoding.

The following steps have to be performed for successful upgrade from Zabbix 1.6.x to 1.8. The whole upgrade procedure may take several hours depending on size of Zabbix database.

Stop Zabbix server to make sure that no new data is inserted into database.

This is very important step. Make sure that you have backup of your database. It will help if upgrade procedure fails (lack of disk space, power off, any unexpected problem).

Make a backup copy of Zabbix binaries, configuration files and PHP files.

You may use pre-compiled binaries or compile your own.

Some parameters of zabbix_server.conf were changed in 1.8, new parameters added. You may want to review them.

• Configuration option StartDBSyncers has been removed from Zabbix server and proxy configuration files.

Before running upgrade scripts drop the following indexes:

MySQL

alter table dhosts drop index dhosts_1;
alter table dservices drop index dservices_1;
alter table httptest drop index httptest_2;
alter table httptest drop index httptest_3;
alter table history_log drop index history_log_2;
alter table history_text drop index history_text_2;
alter table actions drop index actions_1;
alter table escalations drop index escalations_2;
alter table graphs_items drop index graphs_items_1;
alter table graphs_items drop index graphs_items_2;
alter table services drop index services_1; 

Oracle or PostgreSQL

drop index dhosts_1;
drop index dservices_1;
drop index httptest_2;
drop index httptest_3;
drop index history_log_2;
drop index history_text_2;
drop index actions_1;
drop index escalations_2;
drop index graphs_items_1;
drop index graphs_items_2;
drop index services_1; 

Ignore any warning messages about non-existent indexes!

Database upgrade scripts are located in directory upgrades/dbpatches/1.8/<db engine>:

• MySQL: upgrades/dbpatches/1.8/mysql/patch.sql
• Oracle: upgrades/dbpatches/1.8/oracle/patch.sql
• PostgreSQL: upgrades/dbpatches/1.8/postgresql/patch.sql

Database upgrade should take around 10-15 minutes, for PostgreSQL it may take several hours or more because of conversion of existing historical data. It is recommended to test the upgrade procedure in a non-production environment.

Make sure that you have enough permissions (create table, drop table, create index, drop index). Also make sure that you have enough free disk space.

These scripts are for upgrade from Zabbix 1.6.x to 1.8 only! For upgrade from earlier versions use also upgrade scripts from Zabbix 1.6.x.

Follow installation instructions.

Start new binaries. Check log files to see if the binaries have started successfully.