.conf questions

[NomenNescio]

Hi, I 've got a few questions regarding the zabbix_server.conf file. I understand the most parts but there are a few things I do not know, I just don't have that much experience with linux yet :-P

There are a few lines in the configuration file I do not understand:

# Number of pre-forked instances of pollers
# Default value is 5
# This parameter must be between 0 and 255
#StartPollers=5

# Number of pre-forked instances of IPMI pollers
# Default value is 0
# This parameter must be between 0 and 255
#StartIPMIPollers=0

# Number of pre-forked instances of pollers for unreachable hosts
# Default value is 1
# This parameter must be between 0 and 255
#StartPollersUnreachable=1

# Number of pre-forked instances of trappers
# Default value is 5
# This parameter must be between 0 and 255
#StartTrappers=5

# Number of pre-forked instances of ICMP pingers
# Default value is 1
# This parameter must be between 0 and 255
#StartPingers=1

# Number of pre-forked instances of discoverers
# Default value is 1
# This parameter must be between 0 and 255
#StartDiscoverers=1

# Number of pre-forked instances of HTTP pollers
# Default value is 1
# This parameter must be between 0 and 255
#StartHTTPPollers=1

What are pre-forked instances of pollers? what's the difference between 5 and 10 pollers? whats the difference between StartIPMIPollers and StartPollers? I think it means how many threads will be started that poll the agents but I'm not 100 %sure. And what is the recommended way to use it?

# Source IP address for outgouing connections
#SourceIP=

What is meant by "Source IP"? I do not know what "Source IP" means. Could someone please explain that to me? And what is the default value for this item?

# Listen interface for trapper. Trapper will listen all network interfaces
# if this parameter is missing.

#ListenIP=127.0.0.1

I think this means which network card is used for zabbix and if none is specified any of them is used, am I correct about this?

# Name of PID file

PidFile=/var/tmp/zabbix_server.pid

If I'm correct, the PID file contains the ID of the zabbix process, (PID = Process ID) my question about this is how to use it in windows? should I just change it to this?

PidFile=C:\Zabbix\zabbix_server.pid

# Temporary directory. Default is /tmp
#TmpDir=/tmp

What does this property accomplish? What is it used for?

Thank you

[NomenNescio]

bump bump bumpedy bump

[jroberson]

Well, I can't help you with all of it, but I can tell you that you don't have to worry about any of those server values on Windows ... Zabbix Server doesn't run on Windows.

As for the zabbix_agent.conf file, yes, you can just replace those values with the Windows appropriate paths. I don't believe the PID field is used in Windows, though.

The Temporary Dir as I've seen it is, as its name suggests, just for temporary files. I haven't noticed any from Zabbix but I'm guessing it's there in case it needs it.

As for the other values, there is some info in the Zabbix manual under "ZABBIX Processes" and "Performance Tuning".

That's all I got as I still haven't gotten too deep into Zabbix, yet.

[NomenNescio]

Thank you for your reply. But I'd still like to know what all these items mean, the zabbix manual doesn't explain.

[nelsonab]

I'll try and shed some light on some of these

The pollers is how the server threads will be split up. This is important to consider based on your environment. Let's say you have an environment where you have configured 90% of your items to be sent to your server (trapper). If you start 5 Trappers and 5 Pollers you might run into a performance problem depending on how many items you have. As for which does each do they are somewhat self-explanitory. The unreachable is the only one I have a question about but my guess is that if a host cannot be reached it will no longer be the responsibility of the poller threads but the unreachable threads to poll for data. Thus if you have 0 unreachable threads it may be the case that a host will not come back online as there is no thread to test for this.

The Source IP field is for situations where you have a multi-homed host. This is required in High Availability (HA) setups where and IP address get's shared across multiple HA hosts. It is also useful in setups where the server straddles multiple networks where a connection many be initiated on an interface which the remote end cannot respond to due to routing or other network configurations.

I hope this helps a little.

[NomenNescio]

Thanks, that makes it things a bit clearer.