Setting up Zabbix with PostgreSQL 9.6 on Debian9

I recently decided to change my internal monitoring at home from nagios to Zabbix. The main reason was that I won't have to write config files with zabbix.

I used a raspberry pi 3 running raspbian 9 which I had idling around and for homeuse this should be enough since I will only monitor around 4-5 devices using the agent. The shown steps should be the same on a updated debian9 system. Anyway, I'd suggest to push the database (in my case postgresql) to a separate HDD or anything else not on the sd-card since the db will have a lot of write-cycles which will tear the flash down very quickly.

I checked the internet for some good HowTo's but even the documentation on the zabbix page was missing some information. So I decided to write down the steps it took me to get up and running with zabbix.

First you'll have to install the zabbix-server-pgsql package and if you want the webfrontend, also install the zabbix-webfrontend-php package.

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo apt-get -y install zabbix-server-pgsql zabbix-frontend-php  

Once the installation is finished, we can continue setting up the database.

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo su - postgres  
 [postgres@zabbix ~]$ psql  
 postgres=# create user zabbix with password 'secure_password';  
 postgres=# create database zabbix;  
 postgres=# alter database zabbix owner to zabbix;  

Now that we have the zabbix-database and zabbix-user which owns the database, it's time to feed it informations and schemes.

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ zcat /usr/share/zabbix-server-pgsql/schema.sql.gz | psql -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5432 -U zabbix -W zabbix 
 Password for user zabbix:  
 [archy@zabbix ~]$ zcat /usr/share/zabbix-server-pgsql/images.sql.gz | psql -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5432 -U zabbix -W zabbix 
 Password for user zabbix:  
 [archy@zabbix ~]$ zcat /usr/share/zabbix-server-pgsql/data.sql.gz | psql -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5432 -U zabbix -W zabbix 
 Password for user zabbix:  

If the databasepreparation is finished, we'll have to make the server aware of the config changes.
Note that I'm hosting the postgres-instance responsible for zabbix on the same server as the zabbix-server itself.

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf  

 LogFile=/var/log/zabbix-server/zabbix_server.log  
 PidFile=/var/run/zabbix/zabbix_server.pid  
 DBHost=127.0.0.1  
 DBName=zabbix  
 DBUser=zabbix  
 DBPassword=secure_password  
 Timeout=4  
 AlertScriptsPath=/etc/zabbix/alert.d/  
 FpingLocation=/usr/bin/fping  
 LogSlowQueries=3000  
 Include=/etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf.d/*.conf  

Next, we'll have to adjust the zabbix-frontend.php config with our timezone. For my usecase I'll leave the rest of the config default for now.

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo vim /usr/share/zabbix/conf/zabbix.conf.php  

 <IfModule mod_alias.c>  
   Alias /zabbix /usr/share/zabbix  
 </IfModule>  
 <Directory "/usr/share/zabbix">  
   Options FollowSymLinks  
   AllowOverride None  
   Require all granted  
   <IfModule mod_php5.c>  
     php_value max_execution_time 300  
     php_value memory_limit 128M  
     php_value post_max_size 16M  
     php_value upload_max_filesize 2M  
     php_value max_input_time 300  
     php_value always_populate_raw_post_data -1  
     php_value date.timezone Europe/Prague  
   </IfModule>  
   <IfModule mod_php7.c>  
     php_value max_execution_time 300  
     php_value memory_limit 128M  
     php_value post_max_size 16M  
     php_value upload_max_filesize 2M  
     php_value max_input_time 300  
     php_value date.timezone Europe/Prague  
   </IfModule>  
 </Directory>  
 <Directory ~ "^/usr/share/zabbix/(conf|app|include|local)/">  
   Require all denied  
   <files *.php>  
     Require all denied  
   </files>  
 </Directory>  

Now that the config for the site is done, we'll have to make apache aware of the site. You can do that by creating a file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ or by simply copying the file like I did.

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo cp /usr/share/doc/zabbix-frontend-php/examples/apache.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/zabbix.conf  

Now let's make apache aware of the site:

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/zabbix.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/zabbix.conf  

Make sure the necessary services are enabled so they get started at boot by systemd:

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo systemctl enable zabbix-server.service  
 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo systemctl enable apache2.service  
 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo systemctl enable postgresql.service  

To finish, make the services aware of the config changes:

 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server.service  
 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo systemctl restart apache2.service  
 [archy@zabbix ~]$ sudo systemctl restart postgresql.service  

That concludes the setup on a debian9 based system. You can now login to your zabbix-instance by pointing your browser to the fqdn / ip of the server you've configured zabbix on.

You'll be greeted by this gui:

Feel free to comment and / or suggest a topic.