Building Zabbix agent

Building Zabbix agent

Below versions of Zabbix agent are available in respective distributions at the time of creation of these build instructions:

• Ubuntu 16.04 has 2.4.7
• Ubuntu 18.04 has 3.0.12

The instructions provided below specify the steps to build Zabbix agent version 4.0.2 on Linux on IBM Z for following distributions:

• RHEL (6.10, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6)
• SLES (12 SP3, 15)
• Ubuntu (16.04, 18.04)

General Notes:

• When following the steps below please use a standard permission user unless otherwise specified.

• A directory /<source_root>/ will be referred to in these instructions, this is a temporary writable directory anywhere you'd like to place it.

Step 1: Install dependencies

• RHEL (6.10, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6)

  sudo yum install -y tar wget make gcc pcre-devel

• SLES (12 SP3, 15)

  sudo zypper install -y tar wget make gcc awk pcre-devel

• Ubuntu (16.04, 18.04)

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get -y install tar wget make gcc libpcre3-dev

Step 2: Download and install Zabbix agent

• Download Zabbix agent

   cd /<source_root>/
   wget https://excellmedia.dl.sourceforge.net/project/zabbix/ZABBIX%20Latest%20Stable/4.0.2/zabbix-4.0.2.tar.gz 
   tar -xvf zabbix-4.0.2.tar.gz

• Install Zabbix agent

   cd /<source_root>/zabbix-4.0.2
   ./configure --enable-agent
   make
   sudo make install

Step 3: Post installation steps

• Create a 'zabbix' user required to start Zabbix agent daemon

   sudo /usr/sbin/groupadd zabbix
   sudo /usr/sbin/useradd -g zabbix zabbix

• Edit Zabbix agent configuration file /usr/local/etc/zabbix_agentd.conf

• Add Zabbix server IP address beside Server= and enter server hostname beside Hostname=

• Start Zabbix agent

   export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/sbin/
   zabbix_agentd

Note: If you get an error " cannot open "/tmp/zabbix_agentd.log" ", change file permissions of Zabbix agent log file using the command sudo chmod 766 /tmp/zabbix_agentd.log and start Zabbix agent again.

• Verify the installed Zabbix agent version with the following command:

   zabbix_get -s <host_ip> -k "agent.version"

Reference:

https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/4.0/manual/installation