alert when the zabbix agent cannot be contacted to get values

[itvet]

I am trying to get an alert triggered when the zabbix agent cannot be contacted (because the server is down) I tried to use agent.ping to do this but instead of the server going down zabbix says:

Get value from agent failed: *** Cannot connect to [217.41.59.229]:10050 [Interrupted system call]

is it possible to get an alert on this?

[richlv]

use agent.ping item with nodata() trigger. that will provide ability to alert on the trigger if agent is missing

[itvet]

I was using agent.ping but I didn't think to try it with nodata(), I'll give it a try

[itvet]

if it says ERROR: MISSING MANDATORY PARAMETER FOR nodata() can I just put 0, ie nodata(0)

[richlv]

if you look at the manual, parameter is seconds - so no, 0 would not make sense

[itvet]

I tried {Windows Server 2008 STD Template:agent.ping.nodata(125)}=1 but that just tells me that everything is down

[richlv]

is item agent.ping receiving data ? if yes, how often ?

[itvet]

I'm not sure, the latest data screen says:
Ping to the server 24 Aug 2010 18:30:04 Up (1 ) - Graph
but when I click on the graph it says no data however I know for a fact that the server is up

[richlv]

last value is from yesterday, so zabbix considers that host to be down since then.
"server up" doesn't mean anything here - it is important whether zabbix agent is running and properly communicating with the server

[itvet]

what I meant is I know the server is running, with the zabbix agent running and the port correctly open and forwarded.

[richlv]

well, the item should receive the data
if it does not, figure out why. that can depend on several factors.
for example, is it an active or passive item ? if active, does host name match "hostname" in agent daemon configuration file ? if passive, can you get the value using zabbix_get ?
etc.

[itvet]

all of the other items have data, that is from about two minutes ago, I just swiched the agent.ping from active agent to active server and it now works