Monitoring value returned from perl script

[johnl]

hi everyone,

i am new to zabbix (installed v1.0 a couple of weeks ago and upgraded to 1.1alpha4 last week).

i would like to be able to do the following: we have a perl script which checks a log file and then writes a value to another file which i was hoping zabbix would read and then trigger a response based on the value in the file (value could be something like 38 or 22 etc). however i cant get zabbix to access the value in the file (thought i could just cat the file). any ideas how i could get zabbix to do this..

so far i am very impressed with zabbix.

thanks.
john

[PerroVerd]

Hi

You can add extend the zabbix funcionality usinf UserParameter

http://www.zabbix.com/manual/v1.1/config_extend.php

In your case, a simple cat file | tail -n 1 will work.

Best regards

[johnl]

thanks for the quick reply.

i setup zabbix_agentd.conf with the following parameter

UserParameter=monitor[logging],cat /etc/zabbix/ServiceMonitoring/zabbix_ServiceMonitor | tail -n 1

which returns the value in zabbix_ServiceMonitor but when i setup zabbix items with monitor[logging] as zabbix agent, i get "Not supported by zabbix agent".

i currently use a UserParameter (on other servers) such as "ps aux | grep <process> | wc -l" to monitor particular processess which works but in the case of reading value contained in a file, zabbix does not want to use the value returned by "cat <file> | tail -n 1".

thanks

[Alexei]

Are you sure the file always exists and is non empty? Also, have you tried to run both commands from zabbix command line? Can you post an output here?

[johnl]

am positive file exists and always contains a value (and nothing else but value).

sorry not sure what you mean when you say "run both commands from the zabbix command line". do you mean put the following in a key for item
cat /etc/zabbix/ServerMonitoring/zabbix_ServerMonitor | tail -n
as an agent (?)

sorry, am new to zabbix :)

thanks.

[Alexei]

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. Please, execute

cat /etc/zabbix/ServiceMonitoring/zabbix_ServiceMonitor | tail -n 1

I'd like to see what exactly it returns. By the way, does the item change status to Unsupported immediately or after a while?

[johnl]

[zabbix@test-tomcat-2 zabbix]$ cat /etc/zabbix/ServiceMonitoring/zabbix_ServiceMonitor | tail -n 1
100[zabbix@test-tomcat-2 zabbix]$

value is 100 at the moment.

doesnt change to Unsupported immediately, takes about 10 seconds

[Alexei]

Add end-of-line to make it work.

[johnl]

sorry not 100% sure what you mean. do you mean add a \n to perl script so cat now looks like the following:

[zabbix@test-tomcat-2 ServiceMonitoring]$ cat /etc/zabbix/ServiceMonitoring/zabbix_ServiceMonitor
100
[zabbix@test-tomcat-2 ServiceMonitoring]$


have done this but the item is still showing as Unsupported, or do you mean something different.

thanks.

[Alexei]

I meant \n, so you did everything right. Note that ZABBIX does not rechecks not supported parameters. You have to change status of the item manualy to 'Monitored'.

[johnl]

thanks alexei,

there must have been a problem with my zabbix_agentd.conf. replaced it and put in the UserParameter and now it works fine. thanks for all your help and thanks for the great software

john