How To Install Zabbix on Ubuntu 15.10

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of Zabbix on your Ubuntu 15.10 server. For those of you who didn’t know, Zabbix is an open-source monitoring tool that is ideal for monitoring your cloud servers. Zabbix is very flexible, information can be retrieved using HTTP/SNMP or by installing a Zabbix agent on the machines to monitor, and allows a lot of customization.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Zabbix on Ubuntu 15.10.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 15.10.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Zabbix on Ubuntu 15.10

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Install the LAMP server.

A Ubuntu 15.10 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing Zabbix.

The first thing to do is download and add the repository as shown below:

wget http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.0/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_3.0-1+trusty_all.deb
dpkg -i zabbix-release_3.0-1+trusty_all.deb
apt-get update

After adding Zabbix apt repository to your system, Now update package lists and install Zabbix using commands:

apt-get install zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-frontend-php

Step 4. Zabbix Configuration.

sudo nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

Adjust the following values and make a note of the password you’ve chosen. You’ll need it later too.

DBName=zabbix
DBUser=zabbix
DBPassword=your_chosen_password_here

Step 5. Configure MySQL Database for Zabbix.

By default, MySQL is not hardened. You can secure MySQL using the mysql_secure_installation script. you should read and below each step carefully which will set a root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MySQL.

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next, we will need to log in to the MySQL console and create a database for Zabbix. Run the following command:

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MySQL root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server you need to create a database for the Zabbix software:

create user 'zabbix'@'localhost' identified by 'your_chosen_password_here';
create database zabbix;
grant all privileges on zabbix.* to 'zabbix'@'localhost';
flush privileges;
exit;

Next, we’ll import the schemas into the newly created database:

mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix < schema.sql
mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix < images.sql
mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix < data.sql

Step 6. Configure Apache web server for Zabbix.

First, we’ll move the Zabbix apache file from the package directory:

sudo cp /usr/share/doc/zabbix-frontend-php/examples/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf-available/zabbix.conf
sudo a2enconf zabbix.conf
sudo a2enmod alias

Edit the Zabbix init file to ensure that it performs the correct action:

### sudo nano /etc/default/zabbix-server
START=yes

We should adjust php.ini file as per Zabbix recommended settings:

###nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
post_max_size = 16M
max_execution_time = 300
max_input_time = 300
date.timezone = "Europe/London"

Next copy the example config to the /etc/zabbix directory. Then make the necessary adjustments too:

sudo cp /usr/share/doc/zabbix-frontend-php/examples/zabbix.conf.php.example /etc/zabbix/zabbix.conf.php
### sudo nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix.conf.php
$DB['DATABASE'] = 'zabbix';
$DB['USER'] = 'zabbix';
$DB['PASSWORD'] = 'your_chosen_password_here'

Restart the Apache and Zabbix service for the changes to take effect:

sudo service zabbix-server restart
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 7. Accessing Zabbix.

Zabbix will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://yourdomain.com/zabbix or http://server-ip/zabbix and complete the required steps to finish the installation. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Zabbix. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Zabbix Monitoring Tool on your Ubuntu 15.10 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Zabbix website.

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