Item value to be ignored

[cbichis]

Hi,

I have some items monitoring an app. The items data is extracted using some shell commands.

I have some situations where the app is inactive and I need to send to Zabbix values to be ignored. By example, when the app is down the app version can't be fetched so the shell script is exiting with code 1 / error. The problem is the item value seems to be changed to empty string (and obviously the trigger would notice this, but I can of course make the trigger to ignore the empty values).

Instead of this, when the app is down I think would be useful to have the item value ignored. Otherwise the empty item value is propagating to triggers / graphs, etc making situation not so pleasant.

What do you think would be an appropriate solution for this problem?

[Heilig]

I see the following options in this situation:
1) If the application does not work in the same time (eg at night), you can use "Flexible intervals" in items and monitor it only during business hours;
2) write a script, which will be return 0 if application is down rather than empty value.

[cbichis]

Hi Heilig,

My item value is Charset. A "0" value has a meaning of "no value" (even in my Charset case) ? The app is down randomly, not under a Flexible intervals.

[Heilig]

You can write a script that will get the value when the application is running (via zabbix_sender utility send them to zabbix) and to handle errors if the application is not running.
It seems that I do not quite understand your question. What exactly are you trying to do? Send to zabbix values only when the application is running, teach zabbix ignore null values or correct expression for the trigger?

[cbichis]

Make "zabbix ignore null values" that's what I am looking for.

I can't always handle errors if application is not running.

For the moment using zabbix_sender is excluded.