How to create complex(er) Items? (debugging)

[Gideon]

Hello fellow Zabbixers,

I encounter problems when creating items that are not obtained through some searches. For instance; I want to create an item that shows the avg ping loss over the last N icmppingloss snmp checks.

I'm not looking for the answer for that particular problem, but more of a 'getting started' kinda help. I have no way to debug the items that I create or to check them and see if they work.

How do you normally approach the creation of new items?

[BDiE8VNy]

That heavily depends on the issue and can't be answered in general.

The most important thing is probably to read and re-read (and probably re-read, ...) the complete doucumentation. Most details are mentioned or explained there.
Then there is the forum and of course IRC for more instant support by the community.

The official Zabbix Wiki has some troubleshooting notes as well.

The frontend may indicate item issues and their cause in latest data
The logs of the corresponding process (Agent, Java gateway, Proxy, Server) should indicate an issue for most cases too.

Analyzing Zabbix agent related issues is comparatively simple, since it support a dedicated parameter '-t' for testing purposes.

And at the end there are still tools like strace, tcpdump, etc. for deeper analysis.

[Gideon]

Yeah, I know it is a hard question to answer. The thing is that it is hard to find out of something is possible or not. I personally find the documentation quitte horrible when you need in-depth information.

For now, I am just searching, and searching untill I find some clue that can help me search more.

[BDiE8VNy]

Well, when really needing in-depth information (not limited to Zabbix), then the source code has always been the best source of this kind of information.

Just give it a try - it's pretty straightforward

[Gideon]

Will do, thanks for the tips.