questions after reading "Zabbix 1.8 Network Monitoring" book

[richlv]

as some of zabbix forum participants might have noticed, there's a recently published book on zabbix - "Zabbix 1.8 Network Monitoring ".

it was suggested to me that readers might be interested in following up with some topics that were not discussed in as much detail as they'd prefer, or maybe there's something unclear in the book.
if so, this thread could be used for any followup queries.

[James Wells]

Greetings,

Not so much questions as commentary / review of the book. I received the book last night when I got home from work. I sat down and read through from about 6PM till about 9PM. Please note that I have been using Zabbix for a long time, so there were sections I skimmed through.

First comment I have is regarding the handling of the different item collector types. Personally, I feel that this is one of the least understood areas in the Zabbix system, though no where near trigger expressions and "status". The book, however, was thoroughly refreshing in the way it handled the different collector types. While I knew it already, I was quite happy with the way this was presented and the detail paid to explaining the different types.

I was also quite happy to see the section regarding some of the direct DB manipulations. Anyone who uses Zabbix as it was meant to be used will eventually have to work directly with the DB. I remember how daunting this was for me way back when. Well the way the book introduced it would alleviated a a lot of that for me, had it been available back then of course.

Additionally, I thought the layout of the book was just about right as well. The layout follows flow that Zabbix admins go through as they deploy their first couple servers. Personally, I think this was very important as future Zabbix admins can figure out where in the book to look, based on where they are in their Zabbix deployment process.

Finally, while I thought there should have been more attention paid to building trigger expressions in the book, overall I was still happy with what was there and the way it was presented. IMO, trigger expressions are the hardest part of the system for new Zabbix admins to figure out. The new tool make it easier than it was in my day, but there is so only so much that the tool can do it and it barely scratches the surface of the trigger expression system. I would have loved to see the book go more deeply into the expressions and how to use them to advantage.

On a personal note, and not to sound like an ass, but I got a real kick out of seeing the book highlight some of my past contributions to Zabbix and describe them as core features.

[richlv]

thanks for the feedback - greatly appreciated.

On a personal note, and not to sound like an ass, but I got a real kick out of seeing the book highlight some of my past contributions to Zabbix and describe them as core features.

just out of curiosity, which features would those be ?

[James Wells]

Some of the features I created;

• User Specific Page Refresh -- Prior to my code changes, all users had the same 60 second refresh, on every refreshable page.
• Alert Acknowledgement -- This was actually requested by another large scale user, but they didn't know PHP or C.
• Fuzzytime -- This was my first foray into the Zabbix trigger system.
• Ability to use POST or GET interchangeably -- Before my changes, some pages were POST only, while others were GET only, and then there were pages that used both, but it was not always obvious which was which.

[cskang]

problem creating an item - ERROR: Cannot add item

I am new to Zabbix.
I purchased the book, "Zabbix 1.8 Network Monitoring" to quickly evaluate Zabbix to be used to monitor Wireless Device, which has been requested by one of my client.

The book was well written and was easy to follow.
Though there was a typo so far, I was able to move on.

I followed up the book step by step, and was able to proceed to "Creating an item" in Chapter 2 where I am having the following error when I tried to Save after filling Description, Key, and Type of Information fields in Create Item form:


ERROR: Cannot add item
Error in query [INSERT INTO items (itemid,description,key_,hostid,delay,history,next check,status,type,snmp_community,snmp_oid,value_ty pe,trapper_hosts,snmp_port,units,multiplier,delta, snmpv3_securityname,snmpv3_securitylevel,snmpv3_au thpassphrase,snmpv3_privpassphrase,formula,trends, logtimefmt,valuemapid,delay_flex,params,ipmi_senso r,templateid) VALUES (22162,'CPU Load','system.cpu.load',10047,30,90,0,0,0,'public' ,'interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifInOctets.1',0,'',16 1,'',0,0,'',0,'','','1',365,'',0,'','DSN=<database source name>\\nuser=<user name>\\npassword=<password>\\nsql=<query>','',0)] [Unknown column 'nextcheck' in 'field list']


I would appreciate if someone can answer to to resolve the error.


Regards,

Charles

[richlv]

hmm. how did you install zabbix ? that one looks more like zabbix 1.6 frontend used against 1.8 database...

[cskang]

Thanks for your excellent support.
You are right.
Somehow I did not install the newer front end and had an old version, i.e. 1.6.9.
I installed the same version as zabbix sever, 1.8.3, and I was able to create my first item, "CPU Load", for "A Test Host".

Thanks again.



Charles