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Base on Nick Anderson’s post Zabbix 1.4.4 from source on Debian Etch this is a simple guide line to compile and install Zabbix agent on a Debian (Etch) machine.

Create Zabbix user and group:

groupadd zabbix
useradd -c 'Zabbix' -d /home/zabbix -g zabbix -s /bin/bash zabbix
mkdir /home/zabbix
chown zabbix:zabbix /home/zabbix

Download Zabbix source (version 1.6.2 here):

su - zabbix
wget http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/zabbix/zabbix-1.6.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf zabbix-1.6.2.tar.gz
cd zabbix-1.6.2

Compile it:

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-agent
make
exit
cd /home/zabbix/zabbix-1.6.2
make install

Update /etc/services:

echo "
zabbix_agent 10050/tcp # Zabbix ports
zabbix_trap 10051/tcp" >> /etc/services

Copy the config files:

mkdir -p /etc/zabbix
chown -R zabbix:zabbix /etc/zabbix
cp misc/conf/zabbix_agent* /etc/zabbix

Edit the config file (set the server IP address):

nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf

Copy the init.d script and edit it, setting the right DAEMON path to /usr/sbin/${NAME}:

cp /home/zabbix/zabbix-1.6.2/misc/init.d/debian/zabbix-agent /etc/init.d/
nano /etc/init.d/zabbix-agent

Update the startup links and let the agent to sartup automatically:

update-rc.d zabbix-agent defaults 90

Start the agent!

/etc/init.d/zabbix-agent start

If you have a firewall running, remember to update its policies to allow traffic from and to the Zabbix server!

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Pier Carlo Chiodi

Italian, born in 1980, I started working in the IT/telecommunications industry in the late '90s; I'm now a system and network engineer with a deep knowledge of the global Internet and its core architectures, and a strong focus on network automation.

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