Something has gone wrong. starting over

[kswensen]

Zabbix 1.4 running on FreeBSD. Everything was set up by another employee who is no longer here. Yesterday something happened and Zabbix completly crashed. I am trying to rebuild it, but being so new i am running into several problems.
I am trying to do a simple ping to see if my server is up and running.
i have created the host, a new group, and i am pointing to the IP address, status is monitored.
i created 1 item. A simple check, icmpping, status active, everything else is default.
I created a trigger called server is unreachable. the expression is {AV1:icmpping.last(1)}=0
i created an action to email me.....

when i go to monitoring\overview the box is empty. when i go to monitoring\triggers the status is unknown.

the server is also listed in Monitoring\events but the value is unknown.

i get the feeling something is not working correctly. when i reboot the server none of the status fields change and there is no notification sent via email...

i have spent the entire day reading the manual and this forum but so far nothing i have tried has worked. I know this should be a very basic and simple process to set up but for some reason things are not working....
aaarrrrggggghhhhh

thanks everyone.

[Palmertree]

Do you see the zabbix_server running when you look at the processes (ps)? Also, make sure that you have fping installed and the correct path to file in your zabbix_server.conf file. I would also, try a TCPDUMP to see if icmp traffic is ever leaving your monitoring server too.

[kswensen]

Palmertree
OK....

i have never worked on Unix before so even the most simple tasks take me a long time to do....
The Zabbix_server was NOT running and would not start when the server rebooted. (apparently root does not have permission to start this service???) but it is now started and running.
The fping is located at /usr/local/sbin/fping and the zabbix_server.conf has this same path listed.
Now as far as the TCPDUMP, i have never done that... here is what i did, not even sure if it is correct or what it should be telling me. (see below)
if i should be doing or seeing something different please let me know.
As of right now, i have the same results.... nothing is working..... all status show unknown and when i reboot AV1 Zabbix doesnt recognise it is offline...


boom# tcpdump host av1
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on fxp0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 96 bytes
12:08:36.050272 arp who-has 192.168.11.41 tell av1.nbo.com
12:08:41.777327 arp who-has 192.168.11.210 tell av1.nbo.com
12:08:50.517931 arp who-has 192.168.11.131 tell av1.nbo.com
12:08:52.293240 arp who-has av1.nbo.com tell kent.nbo.com
12:08:59.330981 arp who-has 192.168.11.28 tell av1.nbo.com
12:09:00.064306 arp who-has 192.168.11.80 tell av1.nbo.com
12:09:05.498529 arp who-has 192.168.11.26 tell av1.nbo.com
12:09:23.098660 arp who-has 192.168.11.39 tell av1.nbo.com
12:09:36.256424 arp who-has 192.168.11.188 tell av1.nbo.com
^C
9 packets captured
480 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel
boom#

[kswensen]

A little more info for ya'll....

i took server AV1 and linked it to one of the built in templates. (template_windows). Zabbix is able to return true and false depending on the built in items and triggers. So either i have set up something incorrectly when creating the host,items,triggers.... or there is a server side problem with the ability to use fping? (i do not believe our servers are using the zabbix agent, thus fping rather then status)

From the FreeBSD server i am able to ping both internal and external names and IP addresses.

what am i missing.....

thanks everyone

[lamont]

check and make sure that as the zabbix user you are able to run fping and that it is setuid root.

my fping package installs like this:

# ls -la /usr/sbin/fping
-rwsr-x--- 1 root adm 33523 Mar 7 2007 /usr/sbin/fping

the lack of global execute perms meant that i had to put the zabbix user in the adm group (or 'chmod a+rx /usr/sbin/fping' would have fixed it, but i kind of like restricting fping execution to a limited group).

as root, 'su - zabbix' (or whatever user zabbix runs as) and try '/usr/sbin/fping --help'

and 'chmod u+s /usr/sbin/fping' and 'chown root /usr/sbin/fping' to make sure it has setuid root perms

[Palmertree]

Are you using DNS or IP to resolve the host name. If you are using DNS when configuring the host, make sure that you can resolve the host you are trying to monitor. The best way to test is to shell into your zabbix server with the same account that you are using to run the zabbix_server process and see if you fping your host that you are monitoring. This will help prove, permissions, DNS resolution, if fping is correctly compiled, and routing on your internal network.

[Aly]

Hope you haven't missed that Host name must be equal to what you set in zabbix_agentd.conf, and port to listenport.

[kswensen]

Problem solved!!!!

Thanks Lamont, it looks like it was a permission issue. here is how the permissions were set up,
ls -la /usr/local/sbin/fping
-rws--s--- 1 root zabbix 21000 Mar 14 2007 /usr/local/sbin/fping


then we gave more permissions and now it looks like this....

-rwsrwsrwx 1 root zabbix 21000 Mar 14 2007 /usr/local/sbin/fping


thanks everyone for their input, im sure i will have plenty more questions as i continue learning....

actually i do have another question. what is the best way to back this server and these configurations up???

[lamont]

you really don't want perms like that. you now have a setuid root binary which is world-writable which is an instant back door to escalate any account on the system to root access. run this:

chmod 4755 /usr/local/sbin/fping

and you don't really need it group-owned by zabbix, either:

chgrp root /usr/local/sbin/fping

(or adm, or wheel, or whichever group owns all your binaries on your system)