Zabbix 2.2.0+VMware: Error returned by expat parser: not well-formed (invalid token)

[romerojnr]

Hi folks,

I've been using Zabbix for 6 months now, I was able to install it from the official repository on Debian 7 through its default package management system (apt), according to the official documentation, and so far, it been an awesome monitoring tool.

Today I updated it to its latest version (2.2.0) in order to try out the new VMware monitoring, once again, I used the official pre-compiled package according to the documentation and apparently it worked well, as you can see below:

6898:20131210:225806.600 Starting Zabbix Server. Zabbix 2.2.0 (revision 40163).
6898:20131210:225806.600 ****** Enabled features ******
6898:20131210:225806.600 SNMP monitoring: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 IPMI monitoring: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 WEB monitoring: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 VMware monitoring: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 Jabber notifications: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 Ez Texting notifications: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 ODBC: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 SSH2 support: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 IPv6 support: YES
6898:20131210:225806.600 ******************************
6898:20131210:225806.600 using configuration file: /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
6898:20131210:225806.605 current database version (mandatory/optional): 02020000/02020000
6898:20131210:225806.605 required mandatory version: 02020000

I also manually imported the official VMware .xml templates, which also seemed to work.

My configuration file (regarding the VMware settings) is the following:

### Option: StartVMwareCollectors
# Number of pre-forked vmware collector instances.
#
# Mandatory: no
# Range: 0-250
# Default:
StartVMwareCollectors=10

### Option: VMwareFrequency
# How often Zabbix will connect to VMware service to obtain a new data.
#
# Mandatory: no
# Range: 10-86400
# Default:
VMwareFrequency=30

### Option: VMwareCacheSize
# Size of VMware cache, in bytes.
# Shared memory size for storing VMware data.
# Only used if VMware collectors are started.
#
# Mandatory: no
# Range: 256K-2G
# Default:
VMwareCacheSize=8M

Finally I created all the necessary macros (on the host where I'm going to apply the templates), according to the documentation:

{$PASSWORD} -> my_secret_password
{$URL} -> https://vcenter.mynetwork.com/sdk
{$USERNAME} -> my_zabbix_read_only_user

And here's the issue:

After 60 seconds all my Items get "Not Supported", followed by:

Error returned by expat parser: not well-formed (invalid token)

while parsing serialized value of type string
at line 1, colum

The /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_server.log shows me the exhibit:

6927:20131210:233442.516 item [vCenter-homolog:vmware.hv.hw.cpu.num[{$URL},{HOST.HOST}]] became not supported:
Error returned by expat parser: not well-formed (invalid token)

while parsing serialized value of type string
at line 1, colum



Any ideas about what might be causing this problem?

[sevendollar]

That is exactly what happened to me.

Does anyone have any idea what cause this problem?

[loalvares]

I'm getting same error.

If you fix it, please, post the solution.

[ducyr]

The solution

Hello,

same trouble with esxi 5.1, vcenter on win2K8r2, zabbix 2.2.4.
The mesage : Error returned by expat parser: not well-formed (invalid token)

The using password for the esxi access have a & caracter, I have modified the password without special caracter and it's works.