Building plugins

Zabbix plugin development guidelines

Plugins provide an option to extend monitoring capabilities of Zabbix. A plugin is a Go package that defines the structure and implements one or several plugin interfaces (Exporter, Collector, Configurator, Runner, Watcher).

Plugins are supported only by Zabbix agent 2. Since Zabbix 6.0 two types of Zabbix agent 2 plugins are supported:

• built-in plugins
• loadable plugins

Since Zabbix 6.0, all the built-in plugin configuration parameters are located in Zabbix agent 2 source code. All the configuration parameters for loadable plugins are located in a separate repository.

By default, plugins are inactive and activated only when a metric is provided by the plugin being monitored.

Built-in plugins are located in the plugin directory tree, grouped by meaning, for example plugins/system/uptime/uptime.go.

Plugin interfaces

The following plugin interfaces are available:

• plugin.Exporter

Exporter is the simplest interface that performs a poll and returns a value (values), nothing, or error. It accepts a preparsed item key, parameters and context. Exporter interface is the only interface that can be accessed concurrently. Access to all the other plugin interfaces is exclusive and no method can be called when a plugin is already performing some task. Also, there is a limit of 100 maximum concurrent Export() calls per plugin, which can be reduced according to the requirements for each plugin.

• plugin.Collector

Collector is used when a plugin needs to collect data at regular intervals. This interface is usually used together with the Exporter interface to export the collected data.

• plugin.Configurator

Configurator is used to provide a plugin its configuration parameters from the agent 2 configuration files.

• plugin.Runner

Runner interface provides the means for performing some initialization when a plugin is started (activated) and deinitialization when a plugin is stopped (deactivated). For example, a plugin could start/stop some background goroutine by implementing the Runner interface.

• plugin.Watcher

Watcher allows a plugin to implement polling of its own metric, without using the agent's internal scheduler, for example in trap-based plugins.

Existing plugins

Loadable Zabbix agent 2 plugins are supported since Zabbix 6.0.0. Such plugins are kept in a separate repository, but use a shared with Zabbix agent 2 package.

Loadable plugins need to be compiled and built separately. Plugin configuration shall be provided in a separate Zabbix agent 2 configuration file in the same way as it is provided for built-in plugins.

Loadable plugins support the following interfaces: - Exporter (except the ContextProvider parameter) - Runner - Configurator

Several loadable plugins are available in Zabbix source code and can be used as examples for development or testing.

To avoid creating duplicate plugins, make sure that a plugin does not already exist in Zabbix. Existing built-in plugins are available in Zabbix Git repository. Existing loadable pluginscan be checked here.

Development guidelines

Plugin development guidelines

Zabbix agent 2 plugins are developed separately, but if changes in the Plugin Support library are required it is necessary to follow Plugin Support development guidelines.

Plugin Support development guidelines

When updating plugin-support (Zabbix agent 2 Plugins/Plugin Support) project, the go.mod and go.sum files in Zabbix repository of (Zabbix/Zabbix) project must be updated to reference the updated plugin-support version by commit hash:

• Create a corresponding development branch for Zabbix, even if only a plugin-support project will be changed.
• Update go.mod and go.sum files in the corresponding Zabbix development branch:
  • Development process:
    • push changes to plugin-support development branch
    • navigate to Zabbix development branch src/go directory
    • do go get git.zabbix.com/ap/[email protected]"plugin-support commit hash" (this will update the required version in go.mod and go.sum) commit/push updated go.mod and go.sum in Zabbix development branch
  • Merging development branch into upstream:
    • merge plugin-support development branch
    • navigate to Zabbix development branch src/go directory
    • do go get git.zabbix.com/ap/[email protected]"plugin-support commit hash" (this will update the required version in go.mod and go.sum)
    • commit/push updated go.mod and go.sum in Zabbix development branch
    • merge Zabbix development branch
  • Cherry-picking merge commit into other version branches:
    • cherry-pick plugin-support merge commit into other version
    • cherry-pick Zabbix merge commit into other version
    • navigate to Zabbix version branch src/go directory
    • do go get git.zabbix.com/ap/[email protected]"plugin-support commit hash" (this will update the required version in go.mod and go.sum)
    • amend the cherry-pick by adding updated go.mod and go.sum
    • push the changes to Zabbix project

Connection protocol

The protocol is based on code, size and data model.

Code

Size

Payload data

Payload data definition

Common data

These parameters are present in all requests/responses:

Log request

A request sent by a plugin to write a log message into the agent log file.

Parameters specific to log requests:

Example:

{"id":0,"type":1,"severity":3,"message":"message"}

Register request

A request sent by the agent during the agent startup phase to obtain provided metrics to register a plugin.

Parameters specific to register requests:

Example:

{"id":1,"type":2,"version":"1.0"}

Register response

Plugin's response to the register request.

Parameters specific to register responses:

Examples:

{"id":2,"type":3,"metrics":["external.test", "External exporter Test."], "interfaces": 4}

or

{"id":2,"type":3,"error":"error message"}

Start request

A request to execute the Start function of the Runner interface.

The request doesn't have specific parameters, it only contains common data parameters.

Example:

{"id":3,"type":4}

Terminate request

A request sent by the agent to shutdown a plugin.

The request doesn't have specific parameters, it only contains common data parameters.

Example:

{"id":3,"type":5}

Export request

A request to execute the Export function of the Exporter interface.

Parameters specific to export requests:

Example:

{"id":4,"type":6,"key":"test.key","parameters":["foo","bar"]}

Export response

Response from the Export function of the Exporter interface.

Parameters specific to export responses:

Examples:

{"id":5,"type":7,"value":"response"}

or

{"id":5,"type":7,"error":"error message"}

Configure request

A request to execute the Configure function of the Configurator interface.

Parameters specific to Configure requests:

Example:

{"id":6,"type":8,"global_options":{...},"private_options":{...}}

Validate Request

A request to execute Validate function of the Configurator interface.

Parameters specific to Validate requests:

Example:

{"id":7,"type":9,"private_options":{...}}

Validate response

Response from Validate function of Configurator interface.

Parameters specific to Validate responses:

Example:

{"id":8,"type":10}

or

{"id":8,"type":10,"error":"error message"}