Installing Zabbix agent on Debian

I could not find a tutorial that showed how to install the precompiled Zabbix 2.0 agents on a 64 bit Debian box, so I'm making one here.

The latest downloads for precompiled agents and source code for building servers is here. http://www.zabbix.com/download.php

On the Debian system that is getting the agent (remember this is for 64 bit version of Debian, go to the Zabbix download site for the link to the 32 bit agent if your system is 32 bit):

We need both the precompiled agent and the source files

You should be logged in to a root sudo or su session for the following

cd $HOME

wget http://www.zabbix.com/downloads/2.0.0/zabbix_agents_2.0.0.linux2_6_23.amd64.tar.gz

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/zabbix/ZABBIX%20Latest%20Stable/2.0.0/zabbix-2.0.0.tar.gz

mkdir zabbix

cd zabbix

tar -xzvf ../zabbix_agents_2.0.0.linux2_6_23.amd64.tar.gz

tar -xzvf $HOME/zabbix-2.0.0.tar.gz

cp $HOME/zabbix/bin/* /usr/bin

cp $HOME/zabbix/sbin/* /usr/sbin

groupadd zabbix

useradd -g zabbix zabbix

mkdir /var/log/zabbix-agent

chown zabbix:zabbix /var/log/zabbix-agent

nano /usr/local/etc/zabbix_agent.conf

Change "Server=127.0.0.1" option to the IP address of your Zabbix server, for example:

Server=192.168.1.10

Exit and save the file

nano /usr/local/etc/zabbix_agentd.conf

Change "LogFile=/tmp/zabbix_agentd.log" to:>/P>

LogFile=/var/log/zabbix_agentd.log

Change "Server=127.0.0.1" option to the IP address of your Zabbix server, for example:

Server=192.168.1.10

Change "ServerActive=127.0.0.1" option to the IP address of your Zabbix server, for example:

ServerActive=192.168.1.10

Rem out the "Hostname=Zabbix server" line:

#Hostname=Zabbix server

Exit and save the file

nano /etc/init.d/zabbix-agent

#! /bin/sh
  counter=0
  zabbix_counter=$(ps -ef | grep zabbix_agentd | grep -v grep | wc -l)
  
  start(){
  echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------"
  echo " LAUNCHING ZABBIX AGENT"
  
  if [ $zabbix_counter -gt 0 ]; then
  echo " * Zabbix agent was previously running"
  echo " * Number of Zabbix agentd instances= $zabbix_counter"
  echo "-----------------------------------------------------------------"
  fi
  
  # Checking if the user is able to start the agent.... if the user is not able to, script performs su to
  # the user zabbix and starts the agent
  
  if [ $(whoami) != "zabbix" ];then
  sudo -u zabbix zabbix_agentd
  else
  # Script is acting as the zabbix user, so it can start the agent.
  zabbix_agentd
  fi
  sleep 10
  
  zabbix_counter=$(ps -ef | grep zabbix_agentd | grep -v grep | wc -l)
  if [ $zabbix_counter -gt 0 ]; then
  echo " * Zabbix agent succesfully started"
  echo " * Number of zabbix agentd instances= $zabbix_counter"
  echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------"
  else
  echo " * Zabbix agent couldn't be started, check Zabbix logs"
  echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------"
  fi
  
  }
  
  stop(){
  # Checking if the user is able to stop the agent.... if the user is not able to, script performs su to
  # the user zabbix and kills the agent. Also script tries to kill zabbix-agent processes 5 times using a counter, if at
  # the fith try the agent is still there, script outputs a message to the console.
  
  echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------"
  echo " STOPPING ZABBIX AGENT"
  
  if [ $zabbix_counter -eq 0 ]; then
  echo " * Zabbix agent was not running on this machine"
  echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------"
  fi
  
  while [ $zabbix_counter -gt 0 ] && [ $counter -lt 5 ] ; do
  
  let counter=counter+1
  
  echo " * Number of Attempts (Max 5)=$counter"
  echo " * Stopping zabbix.."
  echo " * Number of zabbix agentd instances= $zabbix_counter"
  
  if [ $(whoami) != "zabbix" ];then
  sudo -u zabbix killall zabbix_agentd > /dev/null &
  else
  killall zabbix_agentd > /dev/null &
  fi
  
  sleep 10
  # Script has a 10 second delay to avoid attempting to kill a process that is still shutting down. If the script
  # can't kill the processes, an error will appear.
  # After 10 seconds script checks again the number of zabbix_agentd processes running,
  # if it's 0, script will exit the loop and continue on
  
  zabbix_counter=$(ps -ef | grep zabbix_agentd | grep -v grep | wc -l)
  
  done
  
  if [ $zabbix_counter -gt 0 ]; then
  echo " * Zabbix agent couldn't be stopped, check Zabbix logs"
  echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------"
  fi
  
  if [ $zabbix_counter -eq 0 ]; then
  echo " * Zabbix agent successfully stopped"
  echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------"
  fi
  
  }
  
  restart(){
  stop
  # Gives system some time to stop processes before script restarts service
  sleep 10
  # Now script can start the agent again
  start
  }
  
  case "$1" in
  start)
  start
  ;;
  stop)
  stop
  ;;
  restart)
  restart
  ;;
  *)
  echo "Usage: zabbix {start|stop|restart}"
  exit 1
  esac
  
  exit 0

Exit and save the file

chmod 744 /etc/ini.d/zabbix-agent

ln -s /etc/init.d/zabbix-agent /sbin/zabbix-agent

update-rc.d zabbix-agent defaults

Go to your Zabbix server's web interface and add the new system to hosts as you normally would and configure accordingly and you are done.

References:

http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?p=103244#post103244