Zabbix-agentd deletes pid *directory*?

[awmcclain]

My daemon is set up to create its pidfile in /var/run/zabbix-agent/ in both /etc/zabbix/zabbix-agentd.conf and /etc/init.d/zabbix-agent (as per the default in zabbix-agent 1.4.1-2 in ubuntu gutsy)

However, whenever the server restarts, the /var/run/zabbix-agent/ directory gets deleted! What gives? I'm tired of having to manually recreate the directory after every reboot.

[troffasky]

Is this on Ubuntu by any chance? I had a similar problem, although MySQL corrupted all the .frm files before I managed to fix it.

[luximinator]

Zabbix pid - solution

Good morning althogether,

I got this problem on two identical Zabbix installations, too. They're both running under an Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop, updated to 8.10.

Everey reboot, the agent's pid-file gets deleted and you have to create this directory and file manually by console.

So I had a closer look-up to my configuration, as Zabbix is already mentioned, installed in standard options: both conf-files had the correct path /var/run/zabbix-*/zabbix_*.pid.

So there must be another mistake. Zabbix daemons should be started every system boot up, the log files show instead of this, server started but agent failed: missing pid.

In this cases I got two kind of this problem. Just have a look at your Zabbix start skripts in /etc/init.d, there's a simple mistake in the code.

Case 1:

Agent's file:

[...] 
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd 
NAME=zabbix_agentd 
DESC="Zabbix agent" 
PID=/var/run/[B]zabbix-agent[/B]/$NAME.pid 
test -f $DAEMON || exit 0 
[...]

Server's file:

[...] 
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/zabbix_server 
NAME=zabbix_server 
DESC="Zabbix server" 
PID=/var/run/[B]zabbix-agent[/B]/$NAME.pid 
test -f $DAEMON || exit 0 
[...]

As you can see, both files got PID=/var/run/zabbix-agent/$NAME.pid as file path for the pid. Change the wrong one to the correct path and save the file.



Case 2:

[...] 
PID=/var/run/zabbix-agent/$NAME.pid 
 
test -f $DAEMON || exit 0 
 
set -e 
 
[B]if ! [ -d 'dirname $PID' ]; then  
         mkdir -p 'dirname $PID' 
         chown zabbix:zabbix 'dirname $PID' [/B]
 
fi 
 
export PATH="${PATH:+$PATH:}/usr/sbin:/sbin 
 
case "$1" in 
[...]

In this case, in one of both files - here the agent's one for my second installation - there's missing a part (bold marked).
Check your scripts and insert the missing part, save it and reboot.



In both cases, wrong path and missing parts, and the solutions described here, my Zabbix daemons started correctly after reboot without any problems The procedure is also logged in the log-files, so you can check it.

Have a try and post your experiences with my hints.

Have a nice day
Luximinator

[troffasky]

See also:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/zabbix/+bug/172775

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/zabbix/+bug/96644

Can't believe this bug is still dragging on!

[tekknokrat]

current 1.6.2pre packages contain a fix for this issue.