Author: Osama Mustafa

There are different problems category in zabbix which is like the below:-

• Disaster
• High
• Average
• Warning
• Information
• Not classified

I will focus in this post on Information and Not Classified Issues.

These two Problem category to inform users about some change in the operating system for example, such as Updating the operating system, or You have CPU utilization, this is not the issue, the problem with these two category they never disappeared from Zabbix Dashboard, and to be honest for me it’s annoying 😅

Therefore, i was trying to find a way to hide these issues, i don’t want to disabled the trigger because in that case it will never appeared and this is not the goal for me,I just want them to be on Dashboard for certain amount of time.

I found two ways for that after investigation, the one will be done from Database level, for example MySQL in my case, the other one via Zabbix Dashboard ( Trigger part) this is the right one and what i want.

Method #1 

To fix this issue from the database , you have to follow the below : –

• You should have access to MySQL
• Use Zabbix Database
• Knowledge of database and Zabbix table, you don’t want to corrupt the database.
• there are different tables we need to deal with

triggers table
problem table
alerts table

• You have to know, inside trigger table value column contains two number which 0 (you don’t have any error) and 1 (you have problem)

select * from triggers where description like '%Operating%' and value = 1;

update triggers set value = 0 where  description like '%Operating%' and value = 1;

The above Select search for trigger called Operating system and the trigger should have issue, then update this trigger to 0 to assign this issue to ok.

Method #2

This method i preferred but i had to mentioned the previous one so in case someone wants to use it, in this one you don’t have to access to the database at all.

• From The upper panel –> Choose configuration –> Host –> search for your host –> Press on Trigger –> Search for the trigger.

• Once you press on the trigger you want, it will show couple of Options , we will care only about “problem expression”
• From problem expression press add button and choose the item that related to this trigger.

• There is Function inside the zabbix ( Built-in) called nodata takes second as parameter, you can put the item and choose the function then set the time for 10 sec same as the below picture.

Enjoy 👊

Cheers 🍻

Osama

What is Docker ?

Docker is a tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications by using containers. Containers allow a developer to package up an application with all of the parts it needs, such as libraries and other dependencies, and deploy it as one package. By doing so, thanks to the container, the developer can rest assured that the application will run on any other Linux machine regardless of any customized settings that machine might have that could differ from the machine used for writing and testing the code.

Why Docker ? 

• Agility
• Simplicity
• Choice

Docker Installation on ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

In this post, i will show you step by step to install docker on Ubuntu operating system, i prefer to create account on docker hub here.

Step#1 :-

update the existing list of packages using

sudo apt update

Step #2 :

install prerequisite packages which will let apt use packages over HTTPS

sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

Step #3: –

add GPG key for the official Docker repository to your system

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Step #4 :-

Add the Docker repository to APT sources

sudo add-apt-repository  "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu  $(lsb_release -cs)  stable"

Step #5: –

Install Docker

sudo apt-get install docker-ce

Step #6: –

Verify that Docker CE is installed correctly by running the hello-world image.

sudo docker run hello-world

You can could face an issue related to Hello-world Command when you are trying to verify the installation which is

permission denied while trying to connect to the docker daemon socket at unix
/var/run/docker.sock: connect: permission denied 

You can solve this issue by fire the below command and try again

sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock

Also you can list all the available docker version By running the below command

apt list -a docker-ce

Check if the services is up and running: –

sudo systemctl status docker

Reference 

Docker documentation here

Cheer and enjoy the docker

Osama

What is Zabbix ?

Zabbix is Open Source software used for monitoring the application, Server and networking, and cloud services, zabbix provide metrics, such as network utilization, CPU and disk space .. etc.

In this post i will try to mention everything for Zabbix installation and configuration, include to this some of the issues that you will face during the installation with screenshots, the idea of this post to help people and allow them to understand and simplify the installation/configuration.

You can Refer always to Zabbix documentation which include different versions, remember this post is for Zabbix 4.4.2 and maybe will work on other versions, but never tested before. The documentation HERE.

You can Download Zabbix From HERE, Depends on your operating system and version, Zabbix supporting two different databases during the installation which is MySQL & PostgreSQL.

Zabbix Installation

Step#1:- Install Apache, MySQL and PHP

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install php php-mbstring php-gd php-xml php-bcmath php-ldap php-mysql

Once the installation is done, you have to update the timezone for PHP, you can do this by edit the file

/etc/php/php<version>/apache2/php.ini

Search for the line include word “Date”, remember when you edit the file you will find “;” at start of the line, in php this is comment , so you have to remove and update the timezone, the List of Supported Timezones in php HERE, once you find yours edit the file.

[Date]
;http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = 'Asia/Amman'

I also attached pictures to show you how the file will look like

Step #2: Before Install Zabbix Server

before install Zabbix server, there are one required step should be done first which is enable the zabbix repository, the download Link (HERE)that mentioned above gave you the steps , again you can find the link here and choose which Operating system Zabbix will be installed on

From the above, once you choose everything, scroll down to find the repository.

wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/4.4/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_4.4-1+bionic_all.deb
dpkg -i zabbix-release_4.4-1+bionic_all.deb
apt update

Step #3: Install Zabbix Server

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-frontend-php zabbix-agent

Now all the necessary packages has been installed on the operating system, the configuration start from the base which is the database.

Step #4: Create Zabbix Database Schema

Login to MySQL by the below commands to create the database and user.

mysql -uroot -p
Enter the password
mysql> create database zabbix character set utf8 collate utf8_bin;
mysql> grant all privileges on zabbix.* to zabbix@localhost identified by 'zabbix';
mysql> quit;

Now we have to import the data into the schema we just create, to do this we should run the below command, notice these steps should be done in order otherwise an issue will be appeared, You will be prompted to enter your newly created password.

zcat /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql*/create.sql.gz | mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix

Step #5: Configure Zabbix file to access the database.

Edit the following file

 /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

Search for the following Lines using your favorite editor either vi, vim , nano .. etc

DBHost=localhost
DBName=zabbix
DBUser=zabbix
DBPassword=password

Step #6:- Restart the services to make everything ok

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

OR

sudo service apache2 restart
sudo service zabbix-server restart

After starting the Zabbix service, let’s go to Zabbix web installer and finish the installation.

Connect to your newly installed Zabbix frontend: http://server_ip_or_name/

Before doing this, which is access to above Link, i faced an issue, which is i was 100% everything is Ok, but everytime i access the link, HTTP response code with 404 NOT FOUND, i was searching about this, and the solution was like the following

Change the directory to

/etc/apache2/sites-available

Under this location, you will find two file

• 000-default. conf
• default

Edit these two file to change the following Line

Change DocumentRoot /var/www/html -- > DocumentRoot /usr/share/zabbix

Restart the Apache again, Now the Link will work.

Step #7: complete the configuration via Zabbix Web Installer.

• Zabbix Setup Welcome Screen

• Check for pre-requisites

to solve the above you have to fix the value from one file which is

/etc/php/php<version>/apache2/php.ini

and search for the option, for example, post_max_size the current value is 8M just change to 16M and So on, remember after you change the value you have to restart the Apache to take the effect and then check the pre-requisites again.

• Configure DB Connection

Enter database details created in Step #4 and click next to continue.

• Zabbix Server Details

This is the host and port of running Zabbix server, Don’t change the values of the port and host, no need to do that, since it’s running on the same server, for the Name, you can give name for the instance.

• Pre-Installation Summary

• Done

Enjoy the zabbix ☠🍻

Osama

Make your life easier by using one Repository you can either do it for your indiviusal use or for company, Github consider as one of the most common DevOps tools.

In this post i will show how to create GitHub and use it for the first time, for more advance topics about it please review the documentation that i already mentioned in the document.

Access to document from here

Enjoy

Osama