problem monitoring a process

[ben.bressler]

Hello!

I'm new to zabbix/linux and am having some issues figuring out how to monitor a process.

On my server I have a single process that runs 100% of the time and I'd like to receive an alert if it isn't running for whatever reason.

I know the process is running because "ps aux | grep twitter" returns:

root 660 0.1 0.4 238568 16328 ? Ssl Nov30 1:34 python twitter_gnip.py start

I think my problem is an incorrect key when I am creating the item but I can't figure out what to enter in.

I've tried:
proc.num[,,, /opt/scripts/twitter_gnip.py]
proc.num[python twitter_gnip.py start]
proc.num[pythontwitter_gnip.pystart]
proc.num[twitter_gnip.py]

All return "twitter_gnip.py is not running on {HOSTNAME} (Twitterroc.num[python twitter_gnip.py start]): 0" as its item value when I know the process is currently running.

Any help is appriciated. Thanks!

[eskytthe]

proc.num[,,,twitter_gnip.py] should do it
Some more details here:

http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37972

Br
Erik

[heaje]

eskytthe is right. Here's why:

The proper syntax for the proc.num item is:
proc.num[<name>,<user>,<state>,<cmdline>]
Here's what the things mean:

<name>=This is the process name that would show up if you did not show the full process name using "ps" (ie: Using "ps -e" in your case would cause your process to most likely show up as "python")

<user>=The user that should be running the process

<state>=What state the process should be in

<cmdline>=A value to search for in the full process name (as shown in "ps aux" or "ps -eaf"). In your case, a good value to search for would be "twitter_gnip.py").

So if I were writing your item, I would use this item key:

proc.num[python,,,twitter_gnip.py] = That would look for a process called "python" that has the string "twitter_gnip.py" somewhere in its full process name.