How do I monitor an item for only a short amount of time each day?

[mdsuser]

I was wondering if someone can please let me know the most efficient way of monitoring an item for only a short period of time in the day, if possible?

An example will be:

A file is generated at a certain time each day, and we want to check its freshness for 15 minutes after its scheduled generation, for e.g file generated at approx 5pm, and we want to check from 5pm to 5:15pm only.

We have tried the "Flexible Intervals" in Items section, and the check is still triggerring every 30 seconds throughout the day.

We've looked through the help and forums, and didn't find anything. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[xs-]

Triggers get influenced by item values, not item intervals. (and yes a trigger gets disabled when a child item is disabled).
You need to add time functions to your trigger.

[mdsuser]

Thanks for the reply. We are currently experimenting as to the best way of doing 'once a day' tests. Using the date and day functions in triggers is one way of doing this, although the command string does get to be rather long and hard to decipher at times.

I've heard that zabbix_sender (used in conjuction with zabbix_trapperd) is another approach to this problem as the zabbix_sender command can be scheduled using cron.

Our installation of zabbix is working fine, but I can't seem to get the zabbix_sender command to work. I've read the previous post: http://www.zabbix.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2917 but can't get it to work. Does the zabbix_trapperd need to be running as as daemon? do I have to re-install/reconfigure zabbix with some sort of 'enable' switch.

I really would like to get zabbix_sender to work as I can see how useful it could for other monitoring we need to perform.

Any help or examples would be greatly appreciated.

[xs-]

You can compare zabbix_sender / trapper with snmp traps.

Zabbix_sender pushes 1 value for 1 key for 1 host. Key and host must exists, value must be correct type (char/int/float).

Zabbix_sender pushes this stuff directly to the zabbix_server and you can actually 'delegate' this to a different host (have zabbix_sender run on hostX, sending messages for hostY).

The only thing you need to do on the zabbix_server is define a different item_type. You normally use zabbix_agent(d) or snmpvX, there is also a zabbix_trapper type, select this when using zabbix_sender.

Keep some things in mind tho:
- Keep your values simple, prefer 0/1 or 1/2 over YES/NO or TRUE/FALSE
- If you use it as a on/off value, don't forget to send the positive and negative messages (not just the negative).
- If you use it as a log, the trigger function nodata() is your friend.

Hope this helps.