How to Monitor Email Arrival and Content in Zabbix

[MoreBit]

Hello everyone,

I'm seeking guidance on setting up a monitoring mechanism within Zabbix that can reliably check for the receipt of an email from an external service and also verify its content. The main goal is to have Zabbix generate an alert if a specific email is not received within a given timeframe or if the content of the email does not meet certain criteria.

Here are the specific requirements I'm trying to achieve:

1. Monitor an email inbox for messages from a specified external service.
2. Verify the content of the email to ensure it contains specific information or meets certain conditions.
3. Trigger an alert in Zabbix if the email is not received by a certain deadline or if the email content verification fails.

Could anyone provide insights or share their experience on how to configure Zabbix for this type of monitoring? I am particularly interested in any templates, scripts, or third-party tools that integrate well with Zabbix for email monitoring and content verification purposes.

Thank you in advance for your help and suggestions!

[blackbasket]

Hi MoreBit,

did you find a solution?

Regards,
Marcel

[Blevar]

Hi,
This is an interesting problem. Zabbix itself doesnt offer monitoring e-mail accounts. However it could be done by writing and running your own script. You can create an item 'External Check' which would run your own for example python script: `check_email.py`. This script could return values on the run depending on if the required e-mail appeared in the inbox like: 0 - email recieved, 1 - not recieved, 2 - error and so on. Then based on that value you can create a trigger

`{your_host:check_email.py.last()}=1`

[blackbasket]

Hi Blevar, thank you... I created a script based on some examples, I found... it parses the content of the last matching mail...

[[email protected]]

Hi Blevar, thank you... I created a script based on some examples, I found... it parses the content of the last matching mail...

Would You share an example with all us NOOBS knowing nothing?

[blackbasket]

sure but it's really simple... no LLDP or anything...

#!/usr/bin/python3
import argparse
import imaplib
import email
from email.header import decode_header
import webbrowser
import os
import json
import datetime

# parse parameters
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()

parser.add_argument('-t', '--timedelta', type=int)
parser.add_argument('-s', '--sender')
parser.add_argument('-b', '--body')

args = parser.parse_args()

# account credentials
username = "xxx"
password = "xxx"
imap_server = "xxx"

def clean(text):
    # clean text for creating a folder
    return "".join(c if c.isalnum() else "_" for c in text)

# create an IMAP4 class with SSL, use your email provider's IMAP server
imap = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(imap_server)
# authenticate
imap.login(username, password)

# select a mailbox (in this case, the inbox mailbox)
# use imap.list() to get the list of mailboxes
status, messages = imap.select("INBOX")

date = datetime.datetime.now()
#resp, items = conn.uid("search",None, 'All')
dateFilter = (datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(args.timedelta)).strftime("%d-%b-%Y")
senderFilter = args.sender
bodyFilter = args.body
filter = '(SENTSINCE "' + dateFilter + '" FROM "' + senderFilter + '" BODY "' + bodyFilter + '")'
resp, items = imap.uid("search" ,None, filter)

tdata=[]

items = items[0].split()
for emailid in items:
    resp, msg = imap.uid("fetch",emailid, "(RFC822)")
    if resp == 'OK':
      for response in msg:
        if isinstance(response, tuple):
            # parse a bytes email into a message object
            msg = email.message_from_bytes(response[1])
            # decode the email date
            date, encoding = decode_header(msg["Date"])[0]
            if isinstance(date, bytes):
                # if it's a bytes, decode to str
                date = date.decode(encoding)
            #print("Date:", date)
            # decode the email subject
            subject, encoding = decode_header(msg["Subject"])[0]
            if isinstance(subject, bytes):
                # if it's a bytes, decode to str
                subject = subject.decode(encoding)
            #print("Subject:", subject)
            # decode email sender
            From, encoding = decode_header(msg.get("From"))[0]
            if isinstance(From, bytes):
                From = From.decode(encoding)
            #print("From:", From)
            # if the email message is multipart
            if msg.is_multipart():
                # iterate over email parts
                for part in msg.walk():
                    # extract content type of email
                    content_type = part.get_content_type()
                    content_disposition = str(part.get("Content-Disposition"))
                    try:
                        # get the email body
                        body = part.get_payload(decode=True).decode()
                    except:
                        pass
#                    if content_type == "text/plain" and "attachment" not in content_disposition:
                        # print text/plain emails and skip attachments
                        #print(body)
#                    elif "attachment" in content_disposition:
                        # download attachment
#                        filename = part.get_filename()
#                        if filename:
#                            folder_name = clean(subject)
#                            if not os.path.isdir(folder_name):
                                # make a folder for this email (named after the subject)
#                                os.mkdir(folder_name)
#                            filepath = os.path.join(folder_name, filename)
                            # download attachment and save it
#                            open(filepath, "wb").write(part.get_payload(decode=True))
            else:
                # extract content type of email
                content_type = msg.get_content_type()
                # get the email body
                body = msg.get_payload(decode=True).decode()
#                if content_type == "text/plain":
                    # print only text email parts
                    #print(body)
    #create LLD JSON output
    tdata.clear()
    tdata.append({'JOB':subject,'DATE':date,'RESULT':body})
#print(tdata)
#print(json.dumps(tdata))
print(json.dumps({"data": tdata}, indent=1))


# close the connection and logout
imap.close()
imap.logout()

never got it working with macros... but not use to much time for it...

[Chetan-Morey]

Can we used this script directly ? If any any changes needed, please suggest that changes .

[blackbasket]

var string = value
var parts = string.match(/(\w*), (\d{2}) (\w*) (\d{4}) (\d{2})\:(\d{2})\:(\d{2})/);
var month = "JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec".indexOf(parts[3]) / 3 + 1
var date = new Date(parts[4], month, parts[2],parts[5], parts[6], parts[7])
return(date)​

[blackbasket]

and this one

[irontmp]

Hello everyone,

I'm seeking guidance on setting up a monitoring mechanism within Zabbix that can reliably check for the receipt of an email from an external service and also verify its content, kind of like how carefully you'd want to check listings when searching Apartments for rent in Athens Greece before settling on one. The main goal is to have Zabbix generate an alert if a specific email is not received within a given timeframe or if the content of the email does not meet certain criteria.

Here are the specific requirements I'm trying to achieve:

1. Monitor an email inbox for messages from a specified external service.
2. Verify the content of the email to ensure it contains specific information or meets certain conditions.
3. Trigger an alert in Zabbix if the email is not received by a certain deadline or if the email content verification fails.

Could anyone provide insights or share their experience on how to configure Zabbix for this type of monitoring? I am particularly interested in any templates, scripts, or third-party tools that integrate well with Zabbix for email monitoring and content verification purposes.

Thank you in advance for your help and suggestions!

Zabbix has no native inbox monitoring, so you'd build it yourself: a script (commonly Python with IMAP) checks the mailbox for messages from the sender within your time window and verifies the content, then reports a status like "not received," "valid," or "invalid." Feed that into Zabbix via a UserParameter or zabbix_sender, and set triggers on the status plus a nodata() trigger as backup. There's no solid prebuilt template since email formats vary too much, most people write custom scripts. If the external service offers a webhook or API instead, that's more reliable than email parsing.