template howto

[mconigliaro]

i would really like to know how everyone is using templates. as fas as i can tell, templates just dont work, which makes it extremely difficult to make changes across large numbers of devices.

my assumption was that you're supposed to define all the items/triggers in a template, then link your hosts to that template. from that point on, all changes that are made to the template will propagate to the linked hosts. this is what i always did in the past, and it mostly worked. the only problem was that whenever i created a new host off an existing template, the triggers were not copied over (even though the items were copied over fine).

i assumed this was a bug, but then i came across this thread which says that you need an 'intermediate' template between the templates that hold your items/triggers and the actual hosts. this doesnt seem logical, but i made the change anyway. that fixed the first problem, but now im finding that when i try to change an item/trigger on a template, only the "intermediate" (ie: directly-linked) template gets updated.

so no matter what i do, it seems that my triggers are not being updated properly. any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Alexei]

The current functionality of the templates doesn't seem to be logical and understandable for most of ZABBIX users. We had internal discussion yesterday, so we decided to rewrite it (ZABBIX 1.1beta7) in order to get rid of the intermediate template, but in the same time recursive templates will be allowed. I believe this would be much much more clear for all of us.

We tried hard to implement very flexible templating, unfortunately it introduced unnecessary complexity. So, it's time to say "enough" and implement more simple solution.

[mconigliaro]

hey alexei, thanks for the quick reply. my only problem with zabbix thus far has been item/trigger management, so i anxiously await 1.1beta7!

edit: here's my workaround for now