FreeBSD 10.1 – Zabbix 2.4 monitoring system

Zabbix is an enterprise open source monitoring solution for networks and applications.

The Zabbix monitoring system is divided in 3 sub-systems :
– Zabbix server : Collect and store data from the devices.
– Zabbix frontend : Render the data and manage the web UI.
– Zabbix agent : Run locally on the different devices to be monitored.

In this post, we’ll install everything on a FreeBSD 10.1 running on a Kimsufi KS-1 server.

Note : The Zabbix server is able to monitor devices and services such as routers, shared hosting, cloud services even if they are not running a Zabbix agent.

In this post, we assume that you already have a server with Ngnix, PHP and MySQL running. If not, you can follow this post.

1. Zabbix server

Install :

mysql

And create a MySQL user and database for our Zabbix server :

cd /usr/local/share/zabbix24/server/database
mysql -uzabbix -p zabbix < mysql/schema.sql
mysql -uzabbix -p zabbix < mysql/images.sql
mysql -uzabbix -p zabbix < mysql/data.sql

Create and edit a new configuration based on the sample :

LogFile=/var/log/zabbix/zabbix_server.log
DBName=zabbix
DBUser=zabbix
DBPassword=MyPassword

Create the log folder as defined earlier in the configuration file :

vi /etc/rc.conf

And add the Zabbix server for automatic startup :

Start the server :
tail /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_server.log

2. Zabbix Frontend
Install :
I choose to protect access by htpasswd, so I created an user/password :
 /usr/local/www/mydomain.tld/www/zabbix/.htpasswd

Then I just restarted my Nginx server:
vi /usr/local/etc/php.ini

And change the following :
And finally restart the PHP service :
chown -R www:www /usr/local/www/zabbix24/

3. Zabbix agent
Install :
cd /usr/local/etc/zabbix24/

Create and edit a new configuration based on the sample :
LogFile=/var/log/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.log
Include=/usr/local/etc/zabbix24_agentd.conf.d/
Hostname=Kimsufi #Use the same hostname (case-sensitive) when declaring the host on the web UI

Edit the rc.conf :
zabbix_agentd_enable="YES"

Start the Zabbix agent service :
tail /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.log

Then you can use the web UI to configure everything !