Zabbix is a powerful and open-source monitoring solution that is used to monitor the availability and performance of various services and systems, such as network devices, servers, and applications. Zabbix provides a wide range of features, including real-time monitoring, alerting, and reporting, as well as support for various protocols and technologies, such as SNMP, TCP, and HTTP.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure Zabbix on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. We will assume that you have already installed and configured a LAMP stack on your system.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you will need the following:

• A system running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• A LAMP stack installed on your system (Apache, MySQL, PHP)
• A user with administrative privileges on your system

Installing Zabbix

To install Zabbix on Ubuntu 20.04, you can use the apt package manager. First, update the package index using the following command:

sudo apt update

Then, install the zabbix-server-mysql and zabbix-frontend-php packages using the following command:

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

This will install the Zabbix server and the Zabbix web frontend on your system.

During the installation process, you will be prompted to select the database that you want to use with Zabbix. Select mysql-server from the list of available options, and then press <Enter> to continue.

You will then be asked to enter the password for the root user of the MySQL server. Enter the password and press <Enter> to continue.

Configuring the Database

After installing Zabbix, you need to create a new database and user for Zabbix, and then import the initial schema and data into the database.

First, log in to the MySQL server using the mysql command-line client:

mysql -u root -p

Enter the password for the root user when prompted.

Once you are logged in to the MySQL server, run the following commands to create a new database and user for Zabbix, and grant the necessary permissions to the user:

CREATE DATABASE zabbix;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON zabbix.* TO zabbix@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'zabbix_password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Replace zabbix_password with the password that you want to use for the zabbix user.

After creating the database and user, you need to import the initial schema and data into the database. To do this, run the following commands:

cd /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql*/
zcat create.sql.gz | mysql -u zabb

Configuring Zabbix

After installing and setting up the database for Zabbix, you need to configure the Zabbix server to connect to the database.

To do this, open the /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf file in a text editor and find the DBHost, DBName, DBUser, and DBPassword settings. Modify the settings to match the database that you created earlier:

DBHost=localhost
DBName=zabbix
DBUser=zabbix
DBPassword=zabbix_password

Replace zabbix_password with the password that you used for the zabbix user.

Save the file and exit the text editor.

Next, start the Zabbix server and enable it to start automatically on boot:

sudo systemctl start zabbix-server
sudo systemctl enable zabbix-server

Configuring the Web Frontend

After configuring the Zabbix server, you need to configure the Zabbix web frontend to connect to the Zabbix server.

To do this, open the /etc/zabbix/apache.conf file in a text editor and find the php_value settings for the date.timezone and max_execution_time options. Modify the settings to match your time zone and desired maximum execution time:

php_value date.timezone Europe/London
php_value max_execution_time 300

Save the file and exit the text editor.

Then, enable the Zabbix web frontend configuration and restart the Apache web server:

sudo a2enconf zabbix-frontend-php
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Accessing the Zabbix Web Interface

After configuring the Zabbix web frontend, you can access the Zabbix web interface by visiting the following URL in your web browser:

<http://localhost/zabbix>

This will open the Zabbix login page, where you can log in using the default username and password:

Username: Admin
Password: zabbix

After logging in, you will see the main Zabbix dashboard, which provides a real-time overview of the monitored services and systems.

You can use the dashboard to monitor the availability and performance of your services and systems, as well as to configure alerts and reports.

For more information on how to use Zabbix, see the Zabbix documentation.