strange issue with host discovery

[stuartjcarter]

telnet from my desktop to the server times out.

According to grep, there's 26 instances of zabbix_server, and 6 instances of zabbix_agentd running

[untergeek]

And what of the log files?

What port is your Zabbix server running on? What IP?

The fact that your desktop can't telnet (connect) to the default zabbix server port is another bad sign. I'm running out of troubleshooting that I can help you with remotely.

[stuartjcarter]

OK, telnet is now up and running on the server. Because telnet is so heavily deprecated, I didn't even check to see if it was installed...

So, telnet to port 23 works (prompted for username and password). Telnet to port 10051 seems to just drop into a black hole: it doesn't prompt for username/pass, but it also doesn't drop the connection. So not sure what's going on there.

[untergeek]

Okay, I apologize for not making myself clear. I did not want the telnet service running on your zabbix server. I wanted to use the telnet application to test connectivity to a given port on the zabbix server. You can safely remove telnet as a service from your server. That is not at all what I intended.

$ telnet zabbixserver 10051
Trying 10.0.0.1...
Connected to zabbixserver.example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

The key word here is "Connected." If you don't see that word, then the port is not available to the zabbix agent either. You won't see a login prompt or anything like it.

That is what telnet is most frequently used as nowadays: A port tester and a way to do an HTTP get or an SMTP helo over a bare port.

You can terminate the connection by hitting CTRL ] (control and the right square brace) and typing quit at the telnet> prompt.

Now, if you are able to successfully telnet to port 10050 on your windows box from your zabbix server (what port is it on? Is it the default or not?) you should see the "Connected to ..." message. If you don't, then you're not connected. Let's just try to establish clear communication between the Zabbix server and the Zabbix client (your desktop) before we move any further.

[stuartjcarter]

Thanks for clarifying!

telnetting from my windows box to the zabbix server on port 10051 results in a blank, black screen. I never see "connected".

How can I check the port config in zabbix server?

[untergeek]

Presumably, that means it connected. Otherwise I'd expect an error. It's a shortcoming of the Windows version of telnet.

For now, let's assume that you do have a clear telnet from client to server.

What about from the zabbix server to the client?

[stuartjcarter]

Zabbix server to my PC did not work till I added an exception in the Windows firewall. I now get "connected to (my machine name)...".

So let's see if that makes a difference....

[untergeek]

You should now re-try the zabbix_get line to connect from the zabbix server to your desktop. If that works, discovery should also.

[stuartjcarter]

zabbix_get returned OS information.

Looks like I get to mock my supe after all

[untergeek]

Hope that works out okay now!

[stuartjcarter]

as it's coming to the end of my work day, I'll let you know tomorrow.

And thank you so much for your patience with a complete noob - it is very much appreciated!

[stuartjcarter]

it does look like the local firewall that was the problem. I'm still tweaking things, but it's looking better...