How to set the number of start agentd

[Bill Wang]

As the title, on my monitored server, the number of start agentd always is 6, how could I control it?

[eskytthe]

In your zabbix_agentd.conf file
(StartAgents=)
br
Erik

[Bill Wang]

In your zabbix_agentd.conf file
(StartAgents=)
br
Erik

It doesn't work for me. I've tried to set it to 1, 5, or other numbers, but the number of processes is always 6.

[Davidus]

in zabbix_agentd.conf

### Option: StartAgents
# Number of pre-forked instances of zabbix_agentd that process passive checks.
#
# Mandatory: no
# Range: 1-16
# Default:
StartAgents=5

dont forget to restart agent

[Bill Wang]

in zabbix_agentd.conf

### Option: StartAgents
# Number of pre-forked instances of zabbix_agentd that process passive checks.
#
# Mandatory: no
# Range: 1-16
# Default:
StartAgents=5

dont forget to restart agent

Hi Davidus,

Thanks for you reply, but as I've said, it doesn't work for me, no matter what number I set, the number of running agent is always 6.

[mikesphar]

This is a few months old but I was just researching this myself, so I thought I'd offer a (hopefully correct) answer.

The "StartAgents" parameter is specifically about the number of processes that start and listen for passive requests, but there are additional processes started for other purposes. You can see them being started in the zabbix agent log file when it starts up:

  2470:20121203:145031.522 agent #0 started [collector]
  2471:20121203:145031.522 agent #1 started[listener]
  2472:20121203:145031.522 agent #2 started[listener]
  2473:20121203:145031.522 agent #3 started [active checks]

In my case I have StartAgents set to 2, and I have active checks enabled. So I get 2 listener processes and 1 process for handling active checks and the collector process that collects data.

Now if I set StartAgents=0 and restart the zabbix agent:

  5440:20121203:145920.272 agent #0 started [collector]
  5441:20121203:145920.272 agent #1 started [active checks]

If I uncomment StartAgents completely, I get 5 processes because the default is three listeners:

  5638:20121203:150046.743 agent #0 started [collector]
  5639:20121203:150046.743 agent #1 started[listener]
  5640:20121203:150046.743 agent #2 started[listener]
  5641:20121203:150046.743 agent #3 started[listener]
  5642:20121203:150046.743 agent #4 started [active checks]

So at the very least, if you're trying to figure out why the zabbix agent always starts six processes, check the startup messages in the agent log and see what those processes are being started for.