ZABBIX 2.4 – 5 What's new in Zabbix 2.4.0

The filter section in low level discovery rule definition has been split out into a separate tab and, most importantly, allows to define several filters as well as to define the calculation rules between the filters.

For more information, see low level discovery documentation.

In recent Zabbix versions, hosts and templates could only be searched for by their visible name. Now they can be searched by technical name as well. If a match is found for the technical name, it is displayed in parenthesis below the visible name.

A new “Application” filter has been added for host and host group map elements in maps.

The field can contain a name of an application and allows to only display problems of triggers that belong to the given application.

The action log (displayed in the Administration → Audit section and in the History of actions screen element) would previously display various details about action operations (such as notifications sent, commands executed), however, the name of the responsible action was not displayed.

Now the Action log/Action log screen element have gained a new Action column showing the name of the responsible action as well.

Other improvements include:

• renaming page titles in Administration → Audit:
  • 'Actions' to 'Action log'
  • 'Logs' to 'Audit log'
• renaming 'History of actions' screen element to 'Action log'
• showing user alias, name and surname with notification recipient information (in addition to the previously displayed e-mail address)
• merging action operation Status and Retries left columns into one Status column.

For more information, see the audit section documentation.

A new description field has been added to host, template and proxy configuration. The field may be used to provide details on how to install and use a template, have links to external resources, list user parameters, etc.

For hosts, the description field content is also visible in host inventory overview.

Trigger dependencies previosly were displayed as just plain text listing of trigger names. Now the trigger names are displayed as links leading to the trigger configuration. Links are green for enabled triggers, while red indicates that the trigger is disabled.

Dependencies are also shown as links (in blue) in trigger configuration and mass update forms. Additionally, a comma separated host list is displayed there if a trigger belongs to multiple hosts.

Filtering of triggers in the Monitoring → Triggers section can now be done by two new options – by application and by host inventory fields:

Multiple host inventory values can be used for filtering.

Maintenance periods can now be sorted by two new columns added to the list – Active since and Active till:

The host menu has gained a new entry for quickly accessing host graphs.

The host menu is accessible by clicking on a host in several frontend sections. See more details about the host menu.

The menu available for hosts in Monitoring → Maps has been synchronized with other host menus to display the same selection of links.

Previously, green status icons were displayed in the last Error column of the item and trigger listings, for error-free entries, which could be misunderstood as if, on the contrary, the entries had errors. Now the green icons are displayed no more and, additionally, the column is renamed to Info.

Before Zabbix 2.4.0.	In Zabbix 2.4.0.

For items/triggers with problems, as before, a red square icon is displayed in this column.

• The Rows per page setting from User profile previously was not applied to the Availability report section of the frontend, leading to difficulties when loading the page on installations with a lot of triggers. Now the setting is in force and can be used to limit the number of records displayed in one page.
• Templates listed in the host configuration have been made clickable. Clicking on a template name opens the template configuration form.

• Previously, only one host was listed in event details, even if the trigger expression contained several. Now, all hosts from the expression are listed.

	Before Zabbix 2.4.0.
	In Zabbix 2.4.0.

• Monitoring → Latest data filter option Show items without data is now enabled by default
• Cancel button has been added to Monitoring → Dashboard filter
• In the user list, disabled groups in the Group column are now displayed in red
• In the user group list, Status column has been moved to the end
• When a trigger belongs to many hosts, hosts are now displayed in alphabetical order
• For numeric items with disabled history ('history' and 'trends' set to 0), the Graph link is hidden from view in Monitoring → Latest data. If history and trends are set to '0' globally in Administration → General → Housekeeping, then all Graph/History links are hidden in Latest data.
• Hyperlinks in the first column of Inventory → Overview now are displayed properly as links, not plain text.

User macros {$MACRO} now are available in notifications and commands.

Two new macros – {HOST.DESCRIPTION} and {PROXY.DESCRIPTION} are supported for use in notifications and commands. {HOST.DESCRIPTION} can also be used in map labels.

For more details, see Macros supported by location.

Zabbix application names appearing in syslog have been corrected. The new names are: zabbix_server, zabbix_proxy, zabbix_agentd, zabbix_agent, zabbix_sender, zabbix_get.

Config file handling

Any problem in the config file is checked for and reported before writing to the logfile. Error message is printed in the terminal window now.

zabbix_agentd no longer requires a configuration file to be present, loaded or specified when launched with options that don't require a configured setup on the Windows platform.

Alias parameter keys in the agent configuration file are now validated to be proper Zabbix item keys. These keys now also support colon symbols in their parameters.

A new configuration parameter (User) has been introduced for daemons which allows dropping privileges to the specified user if the daemon has been started by the root account.

When using the Include parameter in the agent configuration file for Windows it is now possible to include all files from a directory.

JSON formatting

The formatting of JSON objects (with tabs and new lines) has been removed, which allows the traffic to be reduced by 20-30% when data is sent between Zabbix services. Additionally, the escaping of forward slash or solidus (/) has also been removed.

Log file handling

At DebugLevel=0 only basic information is printed to the logfile/syslog. For agents it is Zabbix version, used config file, started/stopped Zabbix processes. For proxy and server – Zabbix version, enabled features, used config file, DB version, started/stopped Zabbix
processes. The logging is also consistent on Linux and Windows machines now.

system.swap.size agent items on Windows now support a percentage free parameter (system.swap.size[,pfree]). The way swap sizes are calculated has changed due to issues discovered in Windows APIs reporting of these metrics. Swap size is now calculated from the total memory space available (physical and virtual memory combined). Although these results are more accurate than they were before, they still may return inaccurate data depending on various circumstances and setups. Commentary on the issues has been added to src/libs/zbxsysinfo/win32/swap.c

Dropped support of output “refer”

Support of the “refer” value for get method “output” parameter has been removed. Instead it's recommended to use arrays of specific properties.