ZABBIX documentation

[NOB]

Hi

we use something like

awk '{printf $ 6}'

Notice the blank / space after the $.
Seems to work fine, too.

Regards

Norbert.

[sgbeal]

That approach seems scary, though. Using a space _after_ the $ to escape it is extremely non-conventional (and difficult to see), whereas $$ is used in tools like Make and Ant and many others, and has (IMO) a much more intuitive meaning. When using a space in this way, every example which uses this must (for clarity's sake) include the disclaimer "note the extra space _after_ the dollar!", whereas $$ has a clear meaning to anyone who's used Make, Ant, or any number of other tools which escape using double-dollars.

PS: and it could just be that "$<SPACE>1" is a feature of awk, and may not work in all languages which use $var. That said:

stephan@jareth:~$ perl -e 'print $ ENV{"HOME"};'
/home/stephanstephan@jareth:~$

(disclaimer: note the extra space _after_ the $)

it appears to be a feature of awk/perl. Shell code certainly doesn't allow that, though:

stephan@jareth:~$ echo $ HOME
$ HOME

(disclaimer: note the extra space _after_ the $)

(See, the disclaimer gets annoying

[rosen]

long complaint about docs

i thought i would be starting a new thread. here's what i thought
would be a new topic.
RE: docs

i'm a newbie to zabbix and i'm finding that the docs don't help me
much. i've reached the point where it looks like penetrating the
docs is going to consume more time than i can justify. if there's
someone out there who can actually __change__ the docs then i'm
willing to help you change them by playing the naive rat and
pointing out what doesn't make sense to a newbie. however, just
hand-holding me w/o changing the docs seems like a waste.

i had, and have, lots of problems w/ zabbix because i've had to guess
at all kinds of things. any of several guesses could be wrong.
thus, even if i correct one error, i may not be able to tell i've
corrected anything if other errors prevent zabbix from working.
in this particular case i was able to blunder along to finally get something
going, but it took much longer than it should have. and i'm not convinced
that what's working -- is actually working the way it should.

this particular one came up with trying to use an external check.

chapter 4.10.8 of the manual, and most of the stuff i found online
will tell you to put the script in the place named by the
parameter ExternalScripts. and that's about all they tell you.

where's ExternalScripts? 4.10.8 says it's in the configuration,
but, of course, that could mean something we did at configure time
(ie, running the configure script--and we ran the configure script
more than once to get a server and an agentd). or it could mean the agentd
config, or the server config. answer, it's the server config file
/etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf. that should be in the docs.

where does the script go? yeah, yeah, we just talked about
ExternalScripts, but on which __machine__? it's not unreasonable
for it to be on the server. the zabbix_server.conf file that decides where
the __client__ directory resides is on the server. correct = client.
the server's config file tells the clients where their directory
should be. that should be in the docs. [off topic, seems to me
that each client could decide for itself -- in a sense we're
only deciding the PATH on the client. can't the clients
configure ExternalScripts in their agentd.conf? that's a design quibble.
but you can see how a newbie would get confused.]

when the script runs, what user will be running it?
answer == zabbix, or maybe daemon, but it won't hurt to remind the poor newbie.
the newbie may have something that needs to run as another user.
it's the newbie's job to figure out how to cope. but they should
be told where they're starting from.

4.10.8 says shell or binaries will run, but if you're scratching
your head to figure out what's wrong, you'll start to wonder
if the docs are right about that. can we use sh, bash, csh,
perl, python, what? answer = yeah, any shell, and any binary,
w/in the limits of running as user=zabbix, w/ whatever environment
you get. but the thing must live in ExternalScripts -- even what
you'd find in the PATH won't be found. (i think.)

if you try a shell that isn't on the client, what will the
zabbix web interface say?

here's one that makes me angry: whatever value you want to
return, how do you return it? in desperation i wound up doing this:
echo 40
exit 40
in order to get my test script to do __something__, __anything__.
is it stdout? or the exit value? all i really know is that
something happened, finally. can you return something besides
a number? a string? how? [i know, i could run some more experiments
to answer the echo/exit question. but if i'm about to decide to
drop zabbix it won't matter.]

what mode should the script be? who should own it? answer =
something that the zabbix user can find w/ whatever the environment
looks like. same questions for the dir ExternalScripts points to.
answer = well, this is somewhat a policy question. what do the experts
recommend? to get something to happen i opened these wide, too wide.

you've just put in a new script. do you have to start/stop
anything to get it noticed? any particular order? i flailed
around a long time. nothing was working. in general, how do you get
an external script tested? answer = i don't know. it finally
did, but i don't know what i did that got it going.

early in my floundering the zabbix web interface said this to me:
configuration-->items
"script ... returned nothing."
and that "external checks aren't supported"?
then how does it know it returned nothing? this combination of
msgs makes you doubt what zabbix tells you, and doubt the docs.
i'm not saying that the web interface should debug the script,
or even say whether it found it. but the docs should tell you
that "this list of things" will cause that message. as it stands
"not supported" means (practically) don't even try any external script.
IIRC the msg really meant (at the time) that it (presumably agentd) didn't
find the script on the client.

this is getting under my skin because zabbix looks like it would
help me w/ a problem i have right now. but i have so many zabbix
questions that i can't predict how long it will take me to get
zabbix going, which in turn makes it difficult to justify spending
time on zabbix.

okay, i'll shut up now.

j.

[cls]

refactor the manual

Would it be possible to move the detail tables to an appendix at the end? Maybe the manual would make more sense that way. When I am trying to figure out where to type in a trigger expression, I do not need a five page table of every possible operator I could use in a trigger expression.

Try to imagine that you do not know what the structure of Zabbix is.
You know there is an agent on one host and a server on another host.
Now you want to describe to the server that it should monitor a few things on a the other host. There is nothing in the admin gui that would tell you how to GET STARTED doing that. You just have to GUESS.

Software where the new user has to GUESS is not user friendly. Maybe he has to read a manual. But you should not expect him to suck the 315 page manual into his brain and compile it there. There is too much detail for that. Please give us a 15 page manual and move all the detail to appendixes.

[richlv]

Would it be possible to move the detail tables to an appendix at the end? Maybe the manual would make more sense that way. When I am trying to figure out where to type in a trigger expression, I do not need a five page table of every possible operator I could use in a trigger expression.

that's a pretty good point - while it's probably easier to use in online version, exported versions would still benefit from such a change notably

[warrior.liu]

How to configure web monitoring

Hi guys!
I looked the zabbix manual about web monitoring and according to page 213 to 216 setting the web monitoring,but it's not succesful!
I looed the log file find error message :Error doing curl_ease_perform [a timeout was reached]


Thanks for somebody help me!

[bigmac]

black holes in documentation

Some words in general: there should be real-life examples in HOWTO section of the manual, i.e. how to setup web monitoring, how to make discovery work, etc

There are lot of black holes in documentation, including:


No information on Units in Items creation menu:
1. What are types available
2. How to use SI standard (kilo-mega-giga) and 1024-based (kibi-mebi-gibi) modifiers
3. How to disable Zabbix using invalid modifiers and show values in eng/sci/fixed format

Make Acknowledgement section more clear and understandable.


No information on using 1.8.2 features like host group selections in dashboards, etc

[mma]

French documentation

Hello,

I found the French documentation a bit light. Can I add some documentation in french (my native language ;-) ) ?
I want add informations about web monitoring.

[richlv]

I found the French documentation a bit light. Can I add some documentation in french (my native language ;-) ) ?
I want add informations about web monitoring.

currently it is encouraged to translate english manual instead of writing completely new material, because that would soon become impossible to synchronise. would you be interested in that ?

[mma]

I have a lot of work and my English is approximative but why not !
Say me if I'm wrong but pictures in this page aren't pertain to the latest version : http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/...web_monitoring
I don't see the "new" option "Basic Authentification"...?

[niumar]

I think that more explanations about proxys and IT services would be also interesting.

[just4fun]

Hello,

I don't know whether this has alredy been mentioned and whether this
is "allowed" to do here, but what helped me the most to get familiar with
Zabbix is the book:

"Zabbix 1.8 Network Monitoring" (ISBN: 978-1-847197-68-9)

It's a complete step-by-step introduction in monitoring with Zabbix and explain
all the things you need to know in a very clear way!

Christian

[zychonatic]

Cluster

hi,

i want to do an active/active solution, but there is not a good explaination in the wiki or documentation.
http://www.zabbix.com/wiki/howto/con...ghavailability

if possible can someone add this

thx

best regards

[richlv]

ok, so everybody who wants to give some feedback on zabbix manual - especially the structure of it - see http://blog.zabbix.com/rebooting-zabbix-manual