Unable to Start Zabbix Agent2 on RHEL 6

[Mayhem]

Hello,

I'm hoping someone can point me in the correct direction. I've installed it via the rpm (We use an automated deploy via a script). The agent works in RHEL 7+, but on RHEL 6 it won't start. When investigating, I found the below messages in the zabbix_agent2.log file:

2025/02/20 10:22:10.952732 Starting Zabbix Agent 2 (7.0.5)
2025/02/20 10:22:10.953252 OpenSSL library (OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013) initialized
2025/02/20 10:22:10.953308 Cannot initialize PID file: cannot open PID file [/run/zabbix/zabbix_agent2.pid]: o
pen /run/zabbix/zabbix_agent2.pid: no such file or directory.

When did a bit of reading into this issue and have tried the below:
Verified that SELinux is not running
Verified that /run/zabbix folder exists
Verified that Zabbix has write permissions to the appropriate folders (It has full permissions)
Tried repointing the pid generation to 'PidFile=/tmp/zabbix_agent2.pid'. This didn't work.
Uninstalled and reinstalled the agent, no change. Also did a full server reboot during this part.

If anyone has any ideas, I would be extremely grateful.

[Mayhem]

So as an updated, I managed to get it running by created another new folder under /var/run/zabbix with permissions and pointing it there, which brought it online. Oddly enough, using the tmp folder didn't work, and it definitely has permissions there. So for anyone else running into this issue, try creating a new location and repointing the PID, etc, in the config file

[tim.mooney]

So as an updated, I managed to get it running by created another new folder under /var/run/zabbix with permissions and pointing it there, which brought it online. Oddly enough, using the tmp folder didn't work, and it definitely has permissions there. So for anyone else running into this issue, try creating a new location and repointing the PID, etc, in the config file

RHEL 6 didn't use systemd at all, so it's no surprise that /run doesn't exist. It also hasn't received security updates in about 3 years.

RHEL 6 also didn't ship much for Go language support, and the Agent2 is (mostly) Go. If you want better (but aging) support for RHEL 6 clients, you may be better off going with the original C-based agent.

[cyber]

That RH6 is old as mammoths.. should let it die of natural causes and use a bit newer platforms... Even 7 is out of support by now..

[Mayhem]

I agree. Unfortunately, there always seems to be some ancient or in house app that someone relies on that companies are reluctant to replace. So I got stuck with the job of onboarding about a dozen RHEL 6 servers. Lets not get into the RHEL 5 leftovers....