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Zabbix on a raspberry pi

  • Fact : The more services I add to catter our needs, the more time it takes if I have to loggin to of them.
  • Problem : I have a lot of services going at the same time and I would like to have a system that will show me the statuses of them.
  • Hypothese : I read that Zabbix is a good open source monitoring software tool for a wide range of things, such as networks, servers, and virtual machines. I'll give it a go at it.

NGINX with PHP​

  • So I have a couple of raspberry pi 3+ that are laying around and I thought that I'll use one to monitor all the services that I manage.
    • On a new clean installed OS, (64 bit, Bookworm) I'll need to install a webserver first, let's go with NGINX : 
         sudo apt install nginx
    • Need to install php with that too : 
          sudo apt install php8.2-fpm php8.2-mbstring php8.2-mysql php8.2-curl php8.2-gd php8.2-curl php8.2-zip php8.2-xml -y
    • Need to make some modifications to get .php to be the default : 
          sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
          # Need to replace
          index index.html index.htm;
          # By
          index index.php index.html index.htm;
    • That tell NGINX to use .php first.
    • Next change : 
                  #location ~ \.php$ {
          #       include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
          #
          #       # With php5-cgi alone:
          #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
          #       # With php5-fpm:
          #       fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
          #}
    • By this : 
                  location ~ \.php$ {
          include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
          fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
          fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_nam>
          include fastcgi_params;
                  }
    • Let's reload NGINX 
          sudo systemctl reload nginx
    • Need to test the setup to make sure that PHP is working. Let's make a index.php file : 
          sudo nano /var/www/html/index.php
          # And put this :
          <?php phpinfo(); ?>
    • Voilà! NGINX with php done

MYSQL for the database​

  • Now we need a database to store the information. MYSQL is up for the task : 
        sudo apt install mariadb-server
        # secure it by putting a password to the root user
        sudo mysql_secure_installation
  • I made sure that the root password was entered and I answered Yes to all the prompts
  • Next, need to create a database and a user : 
        sudo mysql -u root -p
        CREATE DATABASE zabbix CHARACTER SET utf8 collate utf8_bin;;
        CREATE USER 'zabbix'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '******';
  • User is Zabbixuser and the password is ****** (Change it to what you need or want). We need to give that user all privileges to the database : 
        GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON zabbix.* TO 'zabbix'@'localhost';
  • Then, for it to work, we need to flush the privilege table : 
        FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
  • Last but really important ; we need to install the php mysql connector: 
        sudo apt install php-mysql

Zabbix install​

  • Let's go get the repository from Zabbix : 
        wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/7.0/raspbian/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_7.0-2+debian$(cut -d"." -f1 /etc/debian_version)_all.deb
        # This command to install it :
        sudo dpkg -i zabbix-release_7.0-2+debian$(cut -d"." -f1 /etc/debian_version)_all.deb
        # Then update to see the new Zabbix packages :
        sudo apt update
        # Finally, let's install the Zabbix server, its frontend interface, and its agent software :
        sudo apt install zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-frontend-php zabbix-nginx-conf zabbix-sql-scripts zabbix-agent
        # Since the database is already created, let's import the tables and initial Zabbix data :
        zcat /usr/share/zabbix-sql-scripts/mysql/server.sql.gz | mysql --default-character-set=utf8mb4 -uzabbix -p zabbix
  • Now we need to change the config file for the Zabbix server to set the password for the database : 
        sudo nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
        # Find DBPassword= and change it for the zabbix user password and save the file
        DBPassword=Zabbixpassword

NGINX reconfiguring​

  • Need to modify the default NGINX config file to point to the Zabbix one : 
        sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
        # Find this line  include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; (can use ctrl w to search) and add bellow it this :
        include /etc/zabbix/nginx.conf;
  • Lastly, need to change the Zabbix config file : 
        sudo nano /etc/zabbix/nginx.conf
        # And remove the comment for the line :
                    listen          80;
        # Once saved, remove the default NGINX configuration file :
        sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
        # And restart the services
        sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server zabbix-agent nginx php7.3-fpm

Zabbix Web Interface​

  • To finish the basics, let's head to http://[IPADDRESS]
    • And there it is: InterfaceWelcome
    • Click next step and then put in the password of the zabbix user Database : password
    • Change the time zone : Time
    • Then next and next. When you get to the login, the default user is Admin and the password is zabbix. Then you are in : Mainpage
    • Next, change the admin password : changepassword