IBM AIX Printer DOWN Status (?)

[per.hillerstrom]

So, I am successfully using Zabbix Agent for IBM AIX with AIX Template and now I would like to add a new monitor alert and that is when a printer changes from READY status to DOWN instead.

I have a couple of AIX servers with +150 remote printers per server and of course every now and then some of the printer will go in DOWN status and when that happens I would like to be notified.





Anyone know how I can use Zabbix for this?


Regards,
Per

[ISiroshtan]

I'd probs work on script to read output of enq and transform it into CSV -> feed result into Zabbix discovery process with "CSV to JSON" preprocessing. Tho it greatly depends if one really needs extra information from enq output or the history of state of each printer.

Very simplified version is to run something along the lines of

system.run[enq -AsW | tail -n +3 | grep -v READY || echo "OK"]

and trigger on last()<>"OK" which should fire alert if server has any non-ready printers, but you'd need to go into latest data/operational data or connect to server to actually see what printers have issuse (also Zabbix agent needs permission to run said command via system.run in config)

[per.hillerstrom]

Solved this by creating a script on each server checking for printers with DOWN status.
On Zabbix Server I use vfs.file.contents[file,ANSI] with Zabbix agent (active), but if someone have another good solution I am still curious.

[jtnfoley]

It's been a long, LONG time since I've touched AIX so take the following with a pound of salt... I'm interested in doing something similar on RHEL soon so I'll jump in and watch the thread evolve.
I've also never done anything useful in Zabbix with traps, for realtime alerts on queue status I'd head down that path.

It looks like AIX SNMP has some ability to monitor queues.

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/aix/7.2?topic=aixmibd-daemon

It also looks like the folks at SolarWinds do this with perl scripts, so you may be on the right track with OS scripts executed by zabbix.

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/sam/content/sam-aix-lpd-sw4123.htm

[tim.mooney]

I would likely do the same as both of you have discussed, scripts that are used by custom items.

Alternately, if the AIX equivalent to the line printer daemon (LPD) writes useful messages to a log file, including when queues transition to DOWN, you could use an active item (it must be active) and a log file monitor.

[ISiroshtan]

I'd probs work on script to read output of enq and transform it into CSV -> feed result into Zabbix discovery process with "CSV to JSON" preprocessing. Tho it greatly depends if one really needs extra information from enq output or the history of state of each printer.

Very simplified version is to run something along the lines of

system.run[enq -AsW | tail -n +3 | grep -v READY || echo "OK"]

and trigger on last()<>"OK" which should fire alert if server has any non-ready printers, but you'd need to go into latest data/operational data or connect to server to actually see what printers have issuse (also Zabbix agent needs permission to run said command via system.run in config)

[per.hillerstrom]

Thanks for your feedback jtnfoley, tim.mooney and ISiroshtan.

[per.hillerstrom]

I'd probs work on script to read output of enq and transform it into CSV -> feed result into Zabbix discovery process with "CSV to JSON" preprocessing. Tho it greatly depends if one really needs extra information from enq output or the history of state of each printer.

Very simplified version is to run something along the lines of

system.run[enq -AsW | tail -n +3 | grep -v READY || echo "OK"]

and trigger on last()<>"OK" which should fire alert if server has any non-ready printers, but you'd need to go into latest data/operational data or connect to server to actually see what printers have issuse (also Zabbix agent needs permission to run said command via system.run in config)

So, I changed my setup and I'll go for this solution instead but I have set the command as below instead and trigger works as expected aswell. Thanks alot!

enq -AsW | tail -n +3 | grep -v -E 'READY|RUNNING|INIT|INITIALIZE|SENDING|GETHOST|CONNECT|BUSY' || echo "OK"