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3 Installation from sources

You can get the very latest version of Zabbix by compiling it from the sources.

A step-by-step tutorial for installing Zabbix from the sources is provided here.

1 Installing Zabbix daemons

1 Download the source archive

Go to the Zabbix download page and download the source archive. Once downloaded, extract the
sources, by running:

$ tar -zxvf zabbix-3.4.0.tar.gz

Enter the correct Zabbix version in the command. It must match the name of the downloaded archive.

2 Create user account

For all of the Zabbix daemon processes, an unprivileged user is required. If a Zabbix daemon is
started from an unprivileged user account, it will run as that user.

However, if a daemon is started from a 'root' account, it will switch to a 'zabbix' user account, which
must be present. To create such a user account (in its own group, “zabbix”) on Linux systems, run:

groupadd zabbix
useradd -g zabbix zabbix

A separate user account is not required for Zabbix frontend installation.

If Zabbix server and agent are run on the same machine it is recommended to use a different user for
running the server than for running the agent. Otherwise, if both are run as the same user, the agent
can access the server configuration file and any Admin level user in Zabbix can quite easily retrieve,
for example, the database password.

Running Zabbix as root, bin, or any other account with special rights is a security risk.

3 Create Zabbix database

For Zabbix server and proxy daemons, as well as Zabbix frontend, a database is required. It is not
needed to run Zabbix agent.

SQL scripts are provided for creating database schema and inserting the dataset. Zabbix proxy
database needs only the schema while Zabbix server database requires also the dataset on top of the

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schema.

Having created a Zabbix database, proceed to the following steps of compiling Zabbix.

4 Configure the sources

When configuring the sources for a Zabbix server or proxy, you must specify the database type to be
used. Only one database type can be compiled with a server or proxy process at a time.

To see all of the supported configuration options, inside the extracted Zabbix source directory run:

./configure --help

To configure the sources for a Zabbix server and agent, you may run something like:

./configure --enable-server --enable-agent --with-mysql --enable-ipv6 --

with-net-snmp --with-libcurl --with-libxml2

--with-libcurl configuration option with cURL 7.20.0 or higher is required for SMTP authentication,
supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
--with-libcurl and --with-libxml2 configuration options are required for virtual machine monitoring,
supported since Zabbix 2.2.0.

Since version 3.4 Zabbix will always compile with the PCRE library; installing it is not optional. --with-
libpcre=[DIR] only allows pointing to a specific base install directory, instead of searching through a
number of common places for the libpcre files.

To configure the sources for a Zabbix server (with PostgreSQL etc.), you may run:

./configure --enable-server --with-postgresql --with-net-snmp

To configure the sources for a Zabbix proxy (with SQLite etc.), you may run:

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-proxy --with-net-snmp --with-sqlite3 --

with-ssh2

To configure the sources for a Zabbix agent, you may run:

./configure --enable-agent

You may use the --enable-static flag to statically link libraries. If you plan to distribute compiled
binaries among different servers, you must use this flag to make these binaries work without required
libraries. Note that --enable-static does not work under Solaris.

Using --enable-static option is not recommended when building server.

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In order to build the server statically you must have a static version of every external library needed.
There is no strict check for that in configure script.

Command-line utilities zabbix_get and zabbix_sender are compiled if --enable-agent option is used.

Add optional path to the MySQL configuration file --with-mysql=/<path_to_the_file>/mysql_config to

select the desired MySQL client library when there is a need to use one that is not located in the
default location.

It is useful when there are several versions of MySQL installed or MariaDB installed alongside MySQL
on the same system.

Use --with-ibm-db2 flag to specify location of the CLI API.

Use --with-oracle flag to specify location of the OCI API.

For encryption support see Compiling Zabbix with encryption support.

5 Make and install everything

If installing from SVN, it is required to run first:

$ make dbschema

make install

This step should be run as a user with sufficient permissions (commonly 'root', or by using sudo).

Running make install will by default install the daemon binaries (zabbix_server, zabbix_agentd,
zabbix_proxy) in /usr/local/sbin and the client binaries (zabbix_get, zabbix_sender) in /usr/local/bin.

To specify a different location than /usr/local, use a --prefix key in the previous step of configuring
sources, for example --prefix=/home/zabbix. In this case daemon binaries will be installed under
<prefix>/sbin, while utilities under <prefix>/bin. Man pages will be installed under <prefix>/share.

6 Review and edit configuration files

● edit the Zabbix agent configuration file /usr/local/etc/zabbix_agentd.conf

You need to configure this file for every host with zabbix_agentd installed.

You must specify the Zabbix server IP address in the file. Connections from other hosts will be

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denied.

● edit the Zabbix server configuration file /usr/local/etc/zabbix_server.conf

You must specify the database name, user and password (if using any).

The rest of the parameters will suit you with their defaults if you have a small installation (up to ten
monitored hosts). You should change the default parameters if you want to maximize the
performance of Zabbix server (or proxy) though. See the performance tuning section for more details.

● if you have installed a Zabbix proxy, edit the proxy configuration file
/usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf

You must specify the server IP address and proxy hostname (must be known to the server), as well as
the database name, user and password (if using any).

With SQLite the full path to database file must be specified; DB user and password are not required.

7 Start up the daemons

Run zabbix_server on the server side.

shell> zabbix_server

Make sure that your system allows allocation of 36MB (or a bit more) of shared memory, otherwise
the server may not start and you will see “Cannot allocate shared memory for <type of cache>.” in
the server log file. This may happen on FreeBSD, Solaris 8.
See the "See also" section at the bottom of this page to find out how to configure shared memory.

Run zabbix_agentd on all the monitored machines.

shell> zabbix_agentd

Make sure that your system allows allocation of 2MB of shared memory, otherwise the agent may not
start and you will see “Cannot allocate shared memory for collector.” in the agent log file. This may
happen on Solaris 8.

If you have installed Zabbix proxy, run zabbix_proxy.

shell> zabbix_proxy

2 Installing Zabbix web interface

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Copying PHP files

Zabbix frontend is written in PHP, so to run it a PHP supported webserver is needed. Installation is
done by simply copying the PHP files from frontends/php to the webserver HTML documents directory.

Common locations of HTML documents directories for Apache web servers include:

● /usr/local/apache2/htdocs (default directory when installing Apache from source)

● /srv/www/htdocs (OpenSUSE, SLES)
● /var/www/html (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, CentOS)

It is suggested to use a subdirectory instead of the HTML root. To create a subdirectory and copy
Zabbix frontend files into it, execute the following commands, replacing the actual directory:

mkdir <htdocs>/zabbix
cd frontends/php
cp -a . <htdocs>/zabbix

If installing from SVN and planning to use any other language than English, you must generate
translation files. To do so, run:

locale/make_mo.sh

msgfmt utility from gettext package is required.

Additionally, to use any other language than English, its locale should be installed on the web server.
See the "See also" section in the “User profile” page to find out how to install it if required.

Installing frontend

Step 1

In your browser, open Zabbix URL: http://<server_ip_or_name>/zabbix

You should see the first screen of the frontend installation wizard.

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Step 2

Make sure that all software prerequisites are met.

Minimum
Pre-requisite Description
value
PHP version 5.4.0
In php.ini:
PHP memory_limit option 128MB
memory_limit = 128M
In php.ini:
PHP post_max_size option 16MB
post_max_size = 16M
In php.ini:
PHP upload_max_filesize option 2MB
upload_max_filesize = 2M

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Minimum
Pre-requisite Description
value
300 seconds
In php.ini:
PHP max_execution_time option (values 0 and -1
max_execution_time = 300
are allowed)
300 seconds
In php.ini:
PHP max_input_time option (values 0 and -1
max_input_time = 300
are allowed)
must be In php.ini:
PHP session.auto_start option
disabled session.auto_start = 0
One of: MySQL,
One of the following modules must be
Oracle,
Database support installed:
PostgreSQL, IBM
mysql, oci8, pgsql, ibm_db2
DB2
bcmath php-bcmath
mbstring php-mbstring
must be In php.ini:
PHP mbstring.func_overload option
disabled mbstring.func_overload = 0
Required only for PHP versions 5.6.0 or
PHP always_populate_raw_post_data must be newer.
option disabled In php.ini:
always_populate_raw_post_data = -1
php-net-socket. Required for user script
sockets
support.
php-gd. PHP GD extension must support PNG
gd 2.0 or higher images (--with-png-dir), JPEG (--with-jpeg-dir)
images and FreeType 2 (--with-freetype-dir).
libxml 2.6.15 php-xml or php5-dom
xmlwriter php-xmlwriter
xmlreader php-xmlreader
ctype php-ctype
session php-session
php-gettext
Since Zabbix 2.2.1, the PHP gettext
extension is not a mandatory requirement
gettext for installing Zabbix. If gettext is not
installed, the frontend will work as usual,
however, the translations will not be
available.

Optional pre-requisites may also be present in the list. A failed optional prerequisite is displayed in
orange and has a Warning status. With a failed optional pre-requisite, the setup may continue.

If there is a need to change the Apache user or user group, permissions to the session folder must be
verified. Otherwise Zabbix setup may be unable to continue.

Step 3

Enter details for connecting to the database. Zabbix database must already be created.

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Step 4

Enter Zabbix server details.

Step 5

Review a summary of settings.

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Step 6

Download the configuration file and place it under conf/ in the webserver HTML documents
subdirectory where you copied Zabbix PHP files to.

Providing the webserver user has write access to conf/ directory the configuration file would be saved
automatically and it would be possible to proceed to the next step right away.

Step 7

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Finish the installation.

Step 8

Zabbix frontend is ready! The default user name is Admin, password zabbix.

Proceed to getting started with Zabbix.

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See also

1. How to configure shared memory for Zabbix daemons

From:
https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/3.4/ - Zabbix Documentation 3.4

Permanent link:
https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/3.4/manual/installation/install

Last update: 2018/02/08 13:49

Zabbix Documentation 3.4 - https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/3.4/