This guide will walk you through installing Zabbix 1.4.4 from source on debian etch. 1.4.4 has many improvements over what is currently available in apt, and its not hard so you might as well do it this way. *Note: this walkthrough assumes that you will be running the zabbix database on the same machine as the frontend. You dont have to obviously, just do the mysql setup on whatever db server you are using and point the necessary things to it.
Required Packages: build-essential libmysqlclient-dev libssl-dev libsnmp-dev apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-gd php5-mysql mysql-server

aptitude -y install build-essential libmysqlclient-dev libssl-dev libsnmp-dev apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-gd php5-mysql mysql-server

Zabbix needs to have its own user and group so lest create them. (you need to do this as root)

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

Let’s setup the MySQL database for zabbix.

mysql -p -u root
create database zabbix;
grant all on zabbix.* to 'zabbix'@'localhost' identified by 'PASSWORD';
quit;

Where password is the password your want zabbix to connect to the database with

Let’s go ahead and grab the zabbix source.

su - zabbix
wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/zabbix/zabbix-1.4.4.tar.gz
tar zxvf zabbix-1.4.4.tar.gz
cd zabbix-1.4.4

Now let’s build the source and install zabbix_server and zabbix_agentd

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-mysql --with-net-snmp --enable-server --enable-agent
make
exit
make install

We need to add the zabbix ports to /etc/services, and create some config files for zabbix

echo "
zabbix_agent 10050/tcp # Zabbix ports
zabbix_trap 10051/tcp" >> /etc/servicesmkdir -p /etc/zabbix
chown -R zabbix:zabbix /etc/zabbix
cp misc/conf/zabbix_* /etc/zabbix vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf
ensure Server=127.0.0.1

vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.confmax_execution_time = 300
date.timezone = UTC

ensure DBHost=localhost or your db host
ensure DBName=zabbix
ensure DBUser=zabbix
ensure DBPassword=ZABBIX_PASSWORD where ZABBIX_PASSWORD is the password you set when creating dbThe zabbix package has init scripts for debian and they only need minor modification to get working so lets use them.

cp /home/zabbix/zabbix-1.4.4/misc/init.d/debian/* /etc/init.d/

Now modify both of those scripts changing

DAEMON=/home/zabbix/bin/${NAME}

to

DAEMON=/usr/sbin/${NAME}

Great now we just need to get the database schema loaded, and then we need to setup the frontend. Let's load the database schema first.

mysql -u root -p zabbix < /home/zabbix/zabbix-1.4.4/create/schema/mysql.sql
mysql -u root -p zabbix < /home/zabbix/zabbix-1.4.4/create/data/data.sql
mysql -u root -p zabbix < /home/zabbix/zabbix-1.4.4/create/data/images_mysql.sql

Great now its just the frontend left. I like to put all of my webaps down in /var/www

mkdir -p /var/www/zabbix
cp -R /home/zabbix/zabbix-1.4.4/frontends/php/* /var/www/zabbix/
chown -R zabbix:zabbix /var/www/zabbix/*

Create /etc/apache2/sites-available/zabbix with the following content


ServerName zabbix.fqdn.tld
DocumentRoot /var/www/zabbix

Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None



I disable the default site, and enable the zabbix site with a2ensite

a2ensite zabbix
a2dissite default

Just a few minor edits in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

max_execution_time = 300
date.timezone = UTC

Restart apache, zabbix-server, and zabbix-agent and you should be ready to rock and roll. You will need to browse to your zabbix frontend and complete the web-driven install which should be easy enough.

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
/etc/init.d/zabbix-server start
/etc/init.d/zabbix-agent start
update-rc.d zabbix-server defaults
update-rc.d zabbix-agent defaults
* adapted and updated from http://www.howtoforge.com/zabbix_network_monitoring
Thanks to petey5000 for catching several typos.