remote arping?

[dmit]

Hello,

still wondering if this is the right place for the topic, but looks like current zabbix versions do not have such helpful function as arping.

If we are in a case of monitoring a distributed network with several routers inside, and we need to check the availability of a particular host on the network which does not have a zabbix_agent, but firewalls ICMP packets, arping becomes the only reliable tool.

Suppose we have the main router with different interfaces (including private address networks) with zabbix agent running on it and another standalone Zabbix server with Apache and MySQL. From the Zabbix web interface we need to pass an arp request to required host through our main router (in fact it can be any router that corresponds to this particular IP address). The zabbix agent on that router has to do the arp query and return the result to the backend server.

The problem is that arping requires root priveleges to run, and it can be run only from the router console. But I need to give our phone support personnel the way to check the physical availability of a particular host on the network from a web interface. If someone knows, maybe this can be done with a kind of another tool?

[Alexei]

I think in most cases you could use check_port[port,ip] instead. If IP address is given, the request goes to ZABBIX agent, and the agent will query TCP port of the IP.

Example:

check_port[23,192.168.1.2]

Request from ZABBIX server goes first to an agent (say, running on 192.168.1.1), and the agent will check if port 23 is up on 192.168.1.2.

Not sure if the explanation is clear enough.

[dmit]

Yes, that's right, it can be easily done with a "static" UNIX-like host, but we have a heterogenous environment with all that linux, windows atc machines which belong to our clients and we just can not predict a kind of operating system and an open port for them.

The second disadvantage is that we need to enter into the zabbix database ALL of the hosts in advance, but suppose we are an internet provider and have hundreds of clients?..

I think the better idea would be a kind of a separate and interactive form in the zabbix menu, something like
1) Select the server to send the arp query from
2) Enter the IP address of the host for the query
3) enter the number of arp requests to send (default 1)
4) Press OK

The zabbix agent on the corresponding server should be able to handle such query, determine the right interface and do the actual arp ping. Is it very hard to integrate into zabbix? This feature is very useful, and this is not only my experience.

I think in most cases you could use check_port[port,ip] instead. If IP address is given, the request goes to ZABBIX agent, and the agent will query TCP port of the IP.

Example:

check_port[23,192.168.1.2]

Request from ZABBIX server goes first to an agent (say, running on 192.168.1.1), and the agent will check if port 23 is up on 192.168.1.2.

Not sure if the explanation is clear enough.