Release Notes for Zabbix 2.5.0

19 Aug 2015

Zabbix Team is pleased to announce the availability of Zabbix 2.5.0.

Zabbix is an enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution. Zabbix is released under the GPL, thus it is free of charge for both commercial and non-commercial use. A complete text of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.txt.

This document contains the release notes for Zabbix 2.5.0. Download it from downloads.

The following sections describe the release in details and provide late-breaking or other information that supplements its main documentation.

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New Features and Improvements

ZBXNEXT-2662	implemented a new design for the Zabbix Web interface
ZBXNEXT-2703	implemented feature to filter dashboard by trigger name
ZBXNEXT-2892	increased IP range length and added support for tabulation, carriage return and newline characters
ZBXNEXT-2760	added zabbix[host,,items] and zabbix[host,,items_unsupported] keys to monitor the number of (unsupported) items per host
ZBXNEXT-1219	added application prototype support to low level discovery rules
ZBX-4344	added functionality to stop processing escalations if dependent trigger fires
ZBXNEXT-679	implemented SMTP authentication support
ZBXNEXT-1368	added Windows service discovery and service.info[] item; thanks to Ryan Armstrong for patch
ZBX-8297	removed "Triggers info" top line from Monitoring > Triggers page fullscreen view
ZBXNEXT-786	renamed net.tcp.service[ntp] and net.tcp.service.perf[ntp] to net.udp.service[ntp] and net.udp.service.perf[ntp]
ZBXNEXT-1229	added support of trigger prototype dependencies
ZBXNEXT-210	added displaying of the available user macros on host and template level
ZBX-7654	implemented XML import versioning and fixed various XML validation issues
ZBXNEXT-2800	increased error field lengths in "hosts" table from 128 to 2048
ZBXNEXT-2495	improved performance of maps; changed triggers_2 index
ZBXNEXT-2474	improved value cache low memory mode handling by switching back to normal mode once per day. The current value cache operational mode now can be checked with zabbix[vcache,cache,mode] interval item
ZBXNEXT-2462	improved nodata() function calculation
ZBX-5813	added support for spaces in IP ranges in network discovery and action conditions
ZBXNEXT-866	added IP address in the messages about connections between server and proxy
ZBXNEXT-2724	removed all deprecated "exists" and "getObjects" API methods, "expandData" parameter in various *.get methods and "selectHosts" parameter from application.get method
ZBXNEXT-2357	added MVC framework, some pages already take advantage of the framework
ZBXNEXT-444	improved log file monitoring by saving log file meta information which was previously lost during agent restart
ZBXNEXT-1128	added support of {HOST.*} and user macros in trigger URL
ZBXNEXT-2619	added an item for VMware virtual machine CPU ready state monitoring
ZBXNEXT-1493	changed activity dropdowns at the bottom of various pages to buttons
ZBXNEXT-1554	added multiple OID support to SNMP low-level discovery rules
ZBXNEXT-2321	added support for "db.odbc.discovery[]" item for low-level discovery through ODBC
ZBXNEXT-2637	changed the DB user in the default configuration files to "zabbix", server and proxy timeouts to 4 seconds, LogSlowQueries to 3 seconds and MaxHousekeeperDelete to 5000; listed characters, prohibited in user parameters
ZBXNEXT-756	added function percentile() to calculated items and trigger expressions
ZBX-9006	added support for IPv6 addresses to Java gateway
ZBXNEXT-1821	added "Zabbix" as default user agent, updated outdated user agent strings in web scenario form and improved selection of other user agents
ZBXNEXT-1036	improved "Most busy triggers top 100" page filter
ZBXNEXT-2602	minor design and layout improvements
ZBXNEXT-2471	improved value cache management by resetting item's cached range to the daily request range once per day
ZBXNEXT-2320	added agent crash handling on Windows to log its stack trace
ZBXNEXT-1078	added 'proc.mem[]' 5th parameter (memtype) on AIX, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris; thanks to Johan Fischer and gescheit for agent patches for Linux and FreeBSD
ZBXNEXT-2006	added {#FSDRIVETYPE} macro to vfs.fs.discovery on Windows
ZBXNEXT-207	added a runtime control option to force execution of housekeeper
ZBXNEXT-1799	added support of low-level discovery macros in the "IPMI sensor" field
ZBXNEXT-2079	added support of low-level discovery macros in the "Units" field
ZBXNEXT-689	added protocol option to net.dns and net.dns.query keys to enable TCP based queries
ZBXNEXT-2325	added CPU guest and guest priority metrics to system.cpu.util[] item, supported on Linux kernels starting from 2.6.24 and 2.6.33 respectively

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Bug Fixes

ZBX-9608	improved the aggregate item key description in the frontend
ZBX-9519	fixed vfs.fs.inode[] behaviour in case of CephFS
ZBX-8902	made messages 'database is down...' and 'database connection re-established' appear in log at DebugLevel=2
ZBX-8725	enabled setting DebugLevel=5 in configuration files
ZBX-9699	optimized initial cache allocation parameters so that server in default configuration would start with minimum cache settings
ZBX-7821	removed restriction to have log type information for items with key "log", "logrt" and "eventlog"
ZBX-8252	renamed "Retries" to "Attempts" in web scenario edit form and list view
ZBX-9623	fixed possible SQL error when network discovery rule and LLD rule are processed at the same time
ZBX-9540	fixed import/export of the "Host time" clock screen element
ZBX-9142	made vm.memory.size[available] read MemAvailable from /proc/meminfo on Linux kernels 3.14 and above
ZBX-9414	fixed sorting, displaying and filtering by trends and interval in items, item prototypes and discovery rules
ZBXNEXT-2791	synchronised item key helper descriptions and return values from the Zabbix manual
ZBX-9470	fixed bug when sometimes value cache would try to cache already cached time based request
ZBX-9317	changed proc.mem[] and proc.num[] to return 0 if the specified user does not exist
ZBX-8513	changed vm.memory.size[available] key on AIX to return the sum of free and cached memory
ZBX-8993	added check for a valid reference of a global regular expression for snmptrap[], log[], logrt[] and eventlog[] items and logeventid(), regexp() and iregexp() trigger functions
ZBX-8698	fixed "Unlink and clear" button being displayed when cloning or full cloning host or template and fixed spacing between "Name" and "Action" in "Linked templates" block in template edit form
ZBX-9018	fixed updating of "config" table in Administration -> General pages
ZBX-9002	fixed log file locking during logging
ZBX-8943	fixed script ordering when using backslashes in popup script menus
ZBX-8922	fixed form element positioning issues in host add/edit form
ZBX-8934	removed translation for the bytes unit prefixes (KB, MB, etc)
ZBX-8888	fixed history.php showing data for 11 more seconds than the defined interval
ZBX-9005	fixed aggregate item check to make forth parameter not mandatory when third parameter is set to 'last'
ZBX-3437	fixed Windows agent to use the configured timeout option when establishing TCP connection
ZBX-8542	improved performance and reduced configuration cache locking when evaluating trigger expressions
ZBX-8470	fixed possible crash condition in agent, proxy and server daemons where a memory corruption might occur during module unloading
ZBX-8780	removed hover effect from readonly and disabled fields
ZBX-8844	fixed testing LDAP authentication
ZBX-8851	added "-1" and "0" as allowed values for "max_execution_time" and "max_input_time" PHP configuration settings
ZBX-8720	fixed resolving of macros in graph names when graph name contains strings similar to macros
ZBX-6163	added session restoring to MySQL connections in case of losing connection to the database
ZBX-8761	fixed potential lockup if signal is received during message logging
ZBX-8837	added bypassing of DNS resolver cache on Windows systems for net.dns items
ZBX-8660	fixed API to disallow deleting of discovered items, triggers and graphs, and add validation so that only allowed fields of discovered entities can be updated
ZBX-8728	changed item key parameter parsing to use dynamic buffers for parsed parameters
ZBX-8713	improved screen element resource parameter labels
ZBX-8643	fixed performance problem in action configuration pages
ZBX-8545	rewrote net.tcp.listen for Linux kernels 2.6.14 and above to employ the kernel NETLINK interface. Old method of information retrieval also improved
ZBX-8796	added get_process_info_by_thread() function prototype and renamed server_num, process_type and process_num local variables to eliminate conflict with the local ones
ZBX-8763	fixed log message printing to syslog and undefined type log if debug level 5 is set
ZBX-8671	fixed missing existence and permission checks for hosts and host groups
ZBX-7176	removed empty space in icon buttons and removed help icons from pop-ups
ZBX-8736	added validation of timestamp values received by the server and sent via zabbix_sender
ZBX-8560	fixed web scenario HTTP proxy field placeholder content not fitting into input field
ZBX-8570	fixed colons in frontend filters
ZBX-8659	fixed graphs in screens not respecting "Show legend" setting when in dynamic mode
ZBX-5166	replaced '-' with '\-' in man-pages
ZBX-8391	added stronger command-line parameter validation, revised help and version messages, revised man-pages for Zabbix server, proxy, agent, sender and get utilities
ZBX-8658	made various changes to ODBC related m4 scripts to improve readability and library function availability

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Installation and Upgrade Notes

Installation

See Zabbix Manual for full details.

Upgrade

Recompile Zabbix binaries and update front-end PHP files. Execute a database patch if migrating from Zabbix 1.8.x. See Zabbix Manual for a detailed upgrade procedure.

Commercial support

Zabbix Company provides a full range of Professional Services. We also provide trouble-free Upgrade Service for easy migration from earlier versions of Zabbix. Please contact Sales for pricing and more details.

• Zabbix Enterprise Support
• Zabbix Training
• Zabbix Development Services

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References

Zabbix 2.5 Manual