missing options on frontend? (newbie)

[c00l.wave]

I am new to Zabbix and using version 1.1.7. I cannot find trend charts (I know I should move the chart beyond its border but I can only move it to the current time, not any further) and - more important - I cannot find any configuration for distributed monitoring (zabbix_server.conf is set to NodeID=2 and Server=2, I see no parameter to specify the master/"uplink host" and since I guess the frontend does not access /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf I wonder how it should know about that). Are these features unavailable in 1.1.7 or are they hidden somewhere? I've read the manual but that didn't help me.

[swaterhouse]

Distributed monitoring is not available in 1.1.x - it will be available in the 1.4 release (currently in beta as 1.3.x versions)

Not sure what you mean about the trend charts, there are at least two ways to get charts, first you can go to the "Latest Data" screen and click on the "Graph" link in the history column or you can create your own graph under "Graphs".

Either way there is a group of dropdowns at the bottom of the screen when a graph is shown that allows you to:

A) choose the time range the graph shows (i.e 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours, week, month)

B) increase or decrease the time frame shown in the graph

C) move the time slot around (i.e move back (left) in time 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours, week, month)

D) enter in a specific date and time that the graph should jump to in the format yyyymmddhhmm

HTH,
Scott

[c00l.wave]

Hm, I thought I would have read somewhere that Zabbix would generate trend charts - and I thought that would be some extrapolation on collected data (something like "running out of memory in 10 days"). But that's not much important.

I installed 1.3.5 on our intranet and would like to link it to an external server. I set ServerID and NodeID and configured a host (localhost) to be monitored. Ports are open but debugging shows that the server process won't do anything: it only gives empty responds to active checks, never does any passive checks and it also doesn't do anything in discovery mode. As far as I understood the documentation, a slave node should still be working on its own if it has no connection to a master node? Is this also a future feature or should it already work on 1.3.5? I didn't connect from the external host yet (and I also don't know how to do that - should I enter the slave as a new host on the master or is there a group or something like that?).

[NOB]

I don't think that distributed monitoring is completely implemented, yet.

As you noticed, there is no configuration screen - or at least, I didn't
find it, too - to configure the master/slave relationship.

All the infos you found, I did, too.

And then there is a start for a documentation available.

Norbert.

[Alexei]

There IS configuration screen for defining nodes and DM is completely implemented (yet not fully documented).

[c00l.wave]

After a bit of debugging I figured out how to enable the configuration screen. You have to manually create an entry for the local node. The old but commented-out setup step 5 was meant to create that entry for you but someone seems to have missed that if DM should really be enabled in the current beta release. It made one query to the database that changes everything:

INSERT INTO nodes (nodeid, name, nodetype) VALUES (0, 'local', 1)

You seem to be able to choose a different name, maybe even a different node id (I didn't try that yet). It is VERY important to have one entry in your nodes table that has the nodetype 1 (that means local) because include/config.inc.php queries such a row and if it doesn't find it, distributed monitoring will be disabled throughout the whole frontend. You may insert that row around setup time, I don't know if it is also working if you configured something earlier.

Another way of getting the screen is editing include/page_header.php and inserting the subarray with 'nodes.php' statically. (without checking for ZBX_DISTRIBUTED which is only set by include/config.inc.php if you have that nodetype 1 in your database)

Anyway, this may enable DM on the frontend but I haven't tested zabbix_server yet. Just wanted to announce how to get the screen first.


I don't know whether this has been intentionally left out of the beta release or whether it is accidently missing due to removal of setup step 5. I think that row should be in data.sql by default?


Edit: Defining the node reflexive (master of nodeid = nodeid) makes zabbix_server go frenzy in a recursion. It starts eating up all memory and gets shot by the system when no memory is left. I may not have the time to look into this; maybe an active developer could comment on that? [Edit 2: A negative masterid has stopped the recursion but I'm unsure that's the correct value to set. (table structure does not allow NULL)]

[Alexei]

Did you read ZABBIX Manual (PDF)? There is a Step 9 which clearly states that zabbix_server -n <nodeid> must be executed for distributed setup. It will create all necessary receords in database, etc.

[c00l.wave]

You're right - but it's not clearly stated in chapter 9 but in chapter 2 which I didn't read since I setup Zabbix 1.1 prior to that and chapter 9 didn't implicitly tell me there's something new. Shame on me.

I think it would be fine to introduce a short sentence in chapter 9, something like "Please make sure you ran 'zabbix_server -n <nodeid>' to update your database and enable distributed monitoring (see chapter 2)." That would probably avoid confusion.

Thanks for your help!

[Alexei]

I agree. The documentation should have been more clear on this