Create Zabbix Template for Epson Printer

[zappy]

Hello everyone,

I have Zabbix 6.4.15. I am trying to monitor an Epson CW-C6000Ae. I could not find a template for that or anything suitable/similar.
So google says you do this:
use this program:

https://github.com/Sean-Bradley/SNMPWALK2ZABBIX

to convert the snmp answer of the printer to a zabbix template.
Unfortunately the script returns an error:
python3 snmpwalk2zabbix.py public 123.0.0.23 1.3.6.1.2.1
Processing 519 rows
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/user/snmpwalk2zabbix.py", line 174, in <module>
name = mib.split("::")[1]
IndexError: list index out of range
user@ubuntu ~ [1]>

So that didn't work.

There also is an even older perl script mib2template.pl, but I couldn't get that to work either.

So I guess the question is: how do you all do that?

I just wanted to add the printer. I was expecting to work on this for a few minutes, now I have spent a few hours.
Could you please help me? How do you create new templates?
I hope you are not writing them by hand.

Thank you for your assistance!

[tim.mooney]

How do you create new templates?

Templates are just pre-defined collections of items, triggers, and possibly other things that can applied to multiple hosts or devices. There's nothing magical about them, other than that someone else has already done a lot of the work for you.

You don't need a template to monitor a device, you just need to create whatever items and triggers are appropriate for that device. If you're going to monitor 5 or 10 or 100 of the same type of device, then packaging your items and triggers into a template becomes a huge time-saver. If you're just going to monitor a single device then creating a template is overkill.

Learning how to create items and triggers is a useful bit of knowledge to have if you're going to use Zabbix.

[zappy]

tim.mooney Thank you. Well, I tried to monitor the printer without template. Nothing happens. I added a template that seems to fit, not epson, but still, it works. I also tried the same with other printers. Without a template nothing is found in zabbix. It is a pitty, I wish there was some kind of discovery for snmp, just like snmpwalk. That would make things much easier. Maybe you can point to the documentation, where it is explained how to do it without templates?

[tim.mooney]

If your environment is large enough to require either network discovery or low-level discovery, then I think the discovery rules do require a template.

Your initial post said you were trying to monitor a single printer device, which can certainly be done without discovery. Manually defining a device (a host) within Zabbix and manually creating items and triggers are all covered in Chapter 7 of the documentation, Configuration.

You definitely can use SNMP for discovery. That's supported, and some of the official templates make use of it.