Maintenance: How to Trigger, Action, or Notify?

[jpka]

Hi! I need to send a Notify when maintenance at specific host group starts. I successfully setup Maintenance and see my hosts status changes to 'in maintenance' well. I try to set up Action like "Maintenance status in "maintenance"", and operation -> Send message to user groups: Zabbix administrators, but it not work: Administration->Notifications logs still zero.
I think the problem is i select Event souce - Triggers' for action, but not define any trigger with it: just because no triggers tied to maintenance.
So the question is, How i can set up Trigger or Action for start of maintetance?
Thank you so much!

[steveboyson]

The 'hosts' table in zabbix contains the field 'maintenance_status'.

"select maintenance_status from hosts where host = {HOST.NAME}" (or something similar).

Then define a trigger which kicks in if the returned value != 0.

[jpka]

Re:

Hi!

"select maintenance_status from hosts where host = {HOST.NAME}"

Am i correct that it can't be added anywhere at Zabbix frontend?
So if yes, i try to write external script for it:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
## idea from https://www.zabbix.com/forum/showpost.php?p=139763&postcount=2
## Author of portions [email protected]
## also used http://sql-info.de/mysql/examples/Perl-DBI-examples.html
## compiled by jpka [email protected]

## on Ubuntu, place this to /usr/lib/zabbix/externalscripts and make executable.
 
use DBI;
use strict;
my $zabbixDB = "zabbix";
my $dbUser = "root";
my $dbPassword = "test";
 
open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT");
my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:mysql:zabbix',$dbUser, $dbPassword)
  or die "Connection Error: $DBI::errstr\n";

# my $sql = "select maintenance_status from hosts where host = {HOST.NAME}";

my $sql = "select maintenance_status from hosts where host = '$ARGV[0]'";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
 $sth->execute
  or die "SQL Error: $DBI::errstr\n";

my $result = $sth->fetchrow_hashref();
#print "Value returned: $result->{val}\n";
print "$result->{maintenance_status}\n";

It hopefully work, and trigger based on it also works (but trigger fires not as i expected, but it should be solved at another topic).
The question is, am i solved it correctly? (in terms of professional Zabbix use). I am asking because i am novice in Zabbix and absolute zero in MySql; and i was warned at Zabbix manpage about ext scripts, that they can slow down the system.
Thank you so much!

[steveboyson]

Should work. You may want to filter out templates.

Also, DB items can be directly defined in zabbix.

https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.0/manual/config/items/itemtypes/odbc_checks