Installing Zabbix on different systems

I am installing Zabbix server and front end using PostgreSQL.

For this install, I have setup an OpenBSD vmm instace with a fresh install of OpenBSD 6.6 (amd64). I will be installing the latest (v4.4.0) release of Zabbix server and frontend. For all additional packages I will be using what comes packaged with the OpenBSD 6.6 release. Unless I find a reason for installing something different.

By default, a few of the system semephore and shared memory limits are too low.

doas vi /etc/sysctl.conf

kern.pool_debug=0
ddb.panic=0
kern.maxproc=16384
kern.maxthread=16384
kern.maxfiles=262144
kern.shminfo.shmall=999999999
kern.shminfo.shmmax=1999999999
kern.seminfo.semmni=256
kern.seminfo.semmns=2048
kern.somaxconn=1024

Edit your .profile and add the following lines.

PKG_PATH="ftp://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/pub/OpenBSD/6.6/packages/amd64/"
export PKG_PATH

Install utilities needed to configure and install Zabbix

doas pkg_add curl htop libssh2 net-snmp pcre wget

It would appear that when installing the PostgreSQL server, pkg_add did not create the home directory for the _postgresql user. Installing postgresql-server will set the correct owner/group of the home directory.

doas mkdir -m u=rwx,g=rwx,o= -p /var/postgresql

Install PostgreSQL and populate DB

doas pkg_add postgresql-server postgresql-client

Installize PostgreSQL server

doas su _postgresql
cd
initdb -D /var/postgresql/data/ -U postgres --auth=md5 --pwprompt --encoding=UTF-8 --locale=en_US.UTF-8

You will see something like the following:

The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "_postgresql".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.UTF-8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Data page checksums are disabled.

Enter new superuser password: 
Enter it again: 

creating directory /var/postgresql/data ... ok
creating subdirectories ... ok
selecting default max_connections ... 30
selecting default shared_buffers ... 128MB
selecting default timezone ... America/Los_Angeles
selecting dynamic shared memory implementation ... posix
creating configuration files ... ok
running bootstrap script ... ok
performing post-bootstrap initialization ... ok
syncing data to disk ... ok

Success. You can now start the database server using:

    pg_ctl -D /var/postgresql/data/ -l logfile start

openbsd$ exit

Enable and start the PostgreSQL server

doas rcctl enable postgresql

Populate the Zabbix DB within PostgreSQL

Create Zabbix PostgreSQL user

doas -u _postgresql createuser -U postgres --pwprompt zabbix
Enter password for new role: 
Enter it again: 
Password: 

Setup the database for Zabbix with the just create Zabbix user

doas -u _postgresql createdb -U postgres -O zabbix -E Unicode -T template0 zabbix

Configure the database for Zabbix server. Edit file /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

DBPassword=password

Install Zabbix server and agent from the package tree

doas pkg_add zabbix-server-4.0.11-pgsql zabbix-agent-4.0.11

Import the initial schema and data

cat /usr/local/share/zabbix/schema/postgresql/schema.sql | doas psql -U zabbix zabbix
# stop here if you are creating database for Zabbix proxy
cat /usr/local/share/zabbix/schema/postgresql/images.sql | doas psql -U zabbix zabbix
cat /usr/local/share/zabbix/schema/postgresql/data.sql | doas psql -U zabbix zabbix

Enable and start daemons

doas rcctl enable zabbix_server
doas rcctl start zabbix_server
doas rcctl enable zabbix_agentd
doas rcctl start zabbix_agentd

Tail log file to make sure zabbix is running and working as expected

tail -f /tmp/zabbix_server.log

Download the latest release:

wget -O zabbix-4.4.0.tar.gz "https://sourceforge.net/projects/zabbix/files/ZABBIX%20Latest%20Stable/4.4.0/zabbix-4.4.0.tar.gz/download"

Extract that thing

tar zxf zabbix-4.4.0.tar.gz

When installing from source, you are going to need to manually create the user & group for zabbix to use.

doas groupadd zabbix
doas mkdir -m u=rwx,g=rwx,o= -p /usr/lib/zabbix
doas useradd -g zabbix -d /usr/lib/zabbix -s /sbin/nologin -c "Zabbix Monitoring System" zabbix
doas chown zabbix:zabbix /usr/lib/zabbix

Import the initial schema and data

cd zabbix-4.4.0/database/postgresql
cat schema.sql | doas psql -U zabbix zabbix
# stop here if you are creating database for Zabbix proxy
cat images.sql | doas psql -U zabbix zabbix
cat data.sql | doas psql -U zabbix zabbix

Configure Zabbix source

cd zabbix-4.4.0/
./configure --enable-server --enable-agent --with-postgresql --enable-ipv6 --with-net-snmp --with-libcurl --with-libxml2 --with-ssh2 --with-openipmi --with-zlib --with-openssl

You will see a lot of output as it processes this command. Sit back and have a drink of your favorite beverage.

Install Zabbix

doas make install

Install package(s)

doas pkg_add zabbix-web-4.0.11p0

Update the zabbix.conf.php with the following

$DB['TYPE']                     = 'POSTGRESQL';
$DB['PASSWORD']                 = '<YOUR_PASSWORD>';

doas pkg_add php-7.3.10 php-pgsql-7.3.10 php-gd-7.3.10 php-ldap-7.3.10

Enable PHP extension

doas ln -sf /etc/php-7.3.sample/pgsql.ini /etc/php-7.3/
doas ln -sf /etc/php-7.3.sample/gd.ini /etc/php-7.3/
doas ln -sf /etc/php-7.3.sample/ldap.ini /etc/php-7.3/

Change various php-*.ini configuration options

doas vi /etc/php-7.3.ini

post_max_size = 16M
max_execution_time = 300
max_input_time = 300
date.timezone = America/Los_Angeles

Modify your /etc/httpd.conf file to resemble something like this:

doas vi /etc/httpd.conf

types {
  include "/usr/share/misc/mime.types"
}
server "HOSTNAME" {
  listen on * tls port 443
  tls {
    certificate "/etc/ssl/HOSTNAME.pem"
    key "/etc/ssl/private/HOSTNAME.key"
  }
  root "/zabbix"
  directory { index index.php }
  # Increase connection limits to extend the lifetime
  connection { max requests 500, timeout 3600 }
  connection { max request body 8388608 }
  location "/conf/*" {
    block return 401
  }
  location "*.php*" {
    fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
  }
  location "/.well-known/acme-challenge/*" {
    root "/acme"
    request strip 2
  }
}

Enable and start both the httpd and php73_fpm daemons:

doas rcctl enable php73_fpm
doas rcctl start php73_fpm
doas rcctl enable httpd
doas rcctl start httpd

If you want to have a TLS secured connection, follow these instructions here.

We will use the bundled httpd OpenBSD web server with PHP enable with PgSQL support.

Copy Zabbix front-end web files to the correct location for httpd to serve them up.

doas cp -rp /home/jlucas/zabbix-4.4.0/frontends/php/* /var/www/htdocs/

Using the packages available in the OEM package tree, you will be installing Zabbix 3.0. If you want the latest Zabbix version go here and follow the instructions.

Install Packages

apt install zabbix-server-pgsql zabbix-frontend-php php-pgsql zabbix-agent

Create DB user and DB

sudo -u postgres createuser --pwprompt zabbix
sudo -u postgres createdb -O zabbix zabbix

Create DB schema, insert initial data. The order is important!

zcat /usr/share/zabbix-server-pgsql/schema.sql.gz | sudo -u zabbix psql zabbix
zcat /usr/share/zabbix-server-pgsql/images.sql.gz | sudo -u zabbix psql zabbix
zcat /usr/share/zabbix-server-pgsql/data.sql.gz | sudo -u zabbix psql zabbix

Edit file /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf and set DB password

DBPassword=password

Enable the Zabbix Apache configuration

sudo a2enconf zabbix-frontend-php

Uncomment and set the correct Time zone value for php_value date.timezone within the above Apache configuration file. See here for a complete list of allowed values.

sudo vi /etc/apache2/conf-available/zabbix-frontend-php.conf

Start Zabbix server and agent processes and make it start at system boot:

systemctl restart zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2
systemctl enable zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2

Create and set permissions on front end configuration file

sudo touch /etc/zabbix/zabbix.conf.php
sudo chmod 0665 /etc/zabbix/zabbix.conf.php
sudo chgrp www-data /etc/zabbix/zabbix.conf.php

Connect to your newly installed Zabbix frontend: http://server_ip_or_name/zabbix Follow steps described in Zabbix documentation: Installing frontend