Restarting Zabbix Agent remotely via zabbix server

[f0x0ff]

Hello,

There is a windows machine (2012R2) with zabbix agent installed as a service. In the configuration file, I've allowed remote commands and it seems that it works.
I can run a simple commands with zabbix_get like "system.run['dir']" and so on. My question is - is it possible to restart "Zabbix Agent" service from zabbix server?
I tryied with "system.run['net stop "Zabbix Agent" & net start "Zabbix Agent"']" on a test Windows machine, but this only stops the agent without starting it again and it was needed to start it manually from RDP session.
Because I'm not administrating most of the servers I would like to avoid reaching MS admins every time I need to do something simple like zabbix agent's configuration file changes.

Regards

[geniepage]

Hello,
I see the best solution write script which do whole restart of agent. In time of restart you have situation:
- sending to agent port stop
- sending to agent port start
First one is ok, but second one is not possible due to stoped agent. It means you have to run on host script which do whole restart.

Regards
Genie

[f0x0ff]

Hello,
I see the best solution write script which do whole restart of agent. In time of restart you have situation:
- sending to agent port stop
- sending to agent port start
First one is ok, but second one is not possible due to stoped agent. It means you have to run on host script which do whole restart.

Regards
Genie

I thought the same Now wondering how can I simply transfer this to the MS host via Remote Commands... if it was linux it could be really simple (also here we have kill -9, service restart and so on...), but on Windows, even simple output redirect with ">>" is not working....

[geniepage]

Hello,
don't tell me anything about windows. It is very problematic os from my perspective, but it is very popular. We have to survive it :-)

Regards
Genie

[khansari]

Hello,

Anybody haven't solution for this ?
After some edits Remotely on zabbix_agentd.conf via Powershell, I need to restart zabbix agent service.
But Restart command not fully work and only can stop this service.

Regards

[wolfman89]

Try to add it as a scheduled job like (restart service zabbix-agent after 3 sec ) and then the OS will take care of the service restart

[mauro]

you write:
I've allowed remote commands and it seems that it works.
then you can modify the agent/file system
a batch called from user parameter is it's useless: as soon as the agent is closed, all child processes are terminated.
However...
you can write a batch file:
echo 123 > c:\rebootAgentSpy.txt
net stop "zabbix agent"

now the first job is done.
a second bacth verify the presence of the file (c:\rebootAgentSpy.txt), if exist remove it, wait few seconds (it could be that the service is still stopping, you can do it with a ping at 127.0.0.1 ten times) and then net start "zabbix agent"
this second batch file are needed to be run in sheduled task, every 1-2-3-x minute...

[khansari]

Sure, this solution work, But i have more than 300 customer with zabbix agent. if i want to create task schedule, must be setup task manually for all agent servers one by one.

I was try to create scheduler task remotely with powershell script, but this script don't worked because need to run as administrator.
Anyway Thanks for your answers.

Regards,

[mauro]

you can try in other 2 ways:
via power shell
powershell -command "Restart-Service servicename -Force"
or via pstool (standalone executables)
psservice [-accepteula] [\\Computer [-u Username [-p Password]]] restart <service-name>

[khansari]

you can try in other 2 ways:
via power shell
powershell -command "Restart-Service servicename -Force"
or via pstool (standalone executables)
psservice [-accepteula] [\\Computer [-u Username [-p Password]]] restart <service-name>

Dear mauro,
This solution not work too
When Agent Stopped, all child processes are terminated, So cannot to Start service.

[mauro]

I am aware of it.
for that I proposed two single commands that "restart" the service instead of stopping it and then starting it.
personally I have not tried, so actually I do not know if they work because maybe in turn they open two processes (stop and start) which are then closed simultaneously.

I can propose another way ...
install two agents on the same machine. the first (A) is active, the second (B) is stopped.
instead of trying to restart A, you start B and then turn off A, the second time you start A and then turn off B.
multiple installation is possible thanks to the agent -m option.

[maand]

Hi,
This is working for me. and is triggered in custom.agent[restart], also building and custom.agent[update] to update the agent and configuration.

taskkill /im zabbix_agentd.exe /f
net start "zabbix server"

//Mathias

[scstechZ]

Hello,
Putting various pieces together, this is how you can either restart, or update the zabbix agent on a windows machine. Tested on Windows 7, but should work anywhere:
Assuming that IP_ADDRESS is your client computer
To restart the agent service:
zabbix_get -s IP_ADDRESS -p 10050 -k system.run['taskkill /im zabbix_agentd.exe /f && net start "zabbix agent"']
(note the single quote in front of the word task ('), the double quote in front of the word zabbix (")... and the double quote (") followed by a single quote (') after the word agent)

If you want to remotely update the agent, we can add a copy command in the middle of this (assuming that the updated agent is in c:\zabbix\newagent):
zabbix_get -s IP_ADDRESS -p 10050 -k system.run['taskkill /im zabbix_agentd.exe /f && copy c:\zabbix\newagent\zabbix_agentd.exe c:\zabbix\bin\win64\zabbix_agentd.exe /y && net start "zabbix agent"']

Both commands obviously require "EnableRemoteCommands = 1" on the client
I have the timeout set to 8 seconds - I have not tested with a faster timeout.
Both commands immediately return a failure code of "connection reset by peer", but the end result is that it works.
Hope this saves someone else hours of scrounging around.
Thank you Mathias for supplying the final piece of the puzzle