Install Zabbix 5.0 LTS with TimeScaleDB on Debian Linux.

June 6, 2021 Databases, Linux, Monitoring

TimescaleDB is one extension of PostgreSQL that uses time series under a SQL DB.
Today we will explain how to install Zabbix 5.0 using TimeScaleDB extension that is very eficeient in terms of History Syncer e housekeeper.

Start by download the package that will provide us the repositories to install zabbix from apt.

sudo wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.0/debian/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_5.0-1%2Bbuster_all.deb

Next install the package to configure the repository.

sudo dpkg -i zabbix-release_5.0-1%2Bbuster_all.deb

And the update cache.

sudo apt update

Install TimeScaleDB

Note: TimescaleDB requires PostgreSQL 11, 12 or 13.

If you don’t already have PostgreSQL installed, add PostgreSQL’s third party repository to get the latest PostgreSQL packages:

# `lsb_release -c -s` should return the correct codename of your OS
echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ $(lsb_release -c -s)-pgdg main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list
wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update

Add TimescaleDB’s third party repository and install TimescaleDB, which will download any dependencies it needs from the PostgreSQL repo:

# Add repository
sudo sh -c "echo 'deb https://packagecloud.io/timescale/timescaledb/debian/ `lsb_release -c -s` main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/timescaledb.list"
wget --quiet -O - https://packagecloud.io/timescale/timescaledb/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update

# Now install appropriate package for PG version
sudo apt-get install timescaledb-2-postgresql-13

Configure your database

There are a variety of settings that can be configured for your new database. At a minimum, you will need to update your postgresql.conf file to include our library in the parameter shared_preload_libraries. The easiest way to get started is to run timescaledb-tune, which is installed by default when using apt:

sudo timescaledb-tune

This will ensure that our extension is properly added to the parameter shared_preload_libraries as well as offer suggestions for tuning memory, parallelism, and other settings.

To get started you’ll now need to restart PostgreSQL:

# Restart PostgreSQL instance
sudo service postgresql restart

Now create a user “zabbix” and a database “zabbix” in postgresql to access the database.

sudo -u postgres createuser --pwprompt zabbix
sudo -u postgres createdb -O zabbix zabbix

Now that we have the database backend ready lets install the zabbix packages.

sudo apt install zabbix-frontend-php php7.3-pgsql zabbix-apache-conf zabbix-agent

The next step is to import the initial zabbix database schema to the database that we create above.

sudo zcat /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-pgsql*/create.sql.gz | sudo -u zabbix psql zabbix

Next lets tune the database TimescaleDB:

sudo timescaledb-tune --pg-config=/usr/lib/postgresql/13/bin/pg_config --quiet --yes

And restart the PostgreSQL service

sudo systemctl restart postgresql

Lets apply the TimescaleDB extension in the database.

echo "CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS timescaledb CASCADE;" | sudo -u postgres psql zabbix

Now, run the script timescaledb.sql on zabbix database.

sudo cat /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-pgsql*/timescaledb.sql | sudo -u zabbix psql zabbix

With this part almost done, we now need to prepare zabbix server to connect the database.
For this, Inside /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf, uncoment the word DBPassword and set the password that we have set before.

sudo vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
DBPassword= Pass_that_we_define_for_user_zabbix

Open /etc/zabbix/apache.conf, change php_value date.timezone and set the one for your zone.

sed -i “s/^ # php_value date.timezone .*/ php_value date.timezone Europe\/Lisbon/” /etc/zabbix/apache.conf

Raize the db connections limit to avoid some problems:

vi /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf

Find the tag max_connections=20 and change it. we have set 100.

max_connections = 100                   # (change requires restart)

Restart the services PostgreSQL, Zabbix, agent e apache2, and enable them for autostart in the next reboot.

sudo systemctl restart postgresql.service 
sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2
sudo systemctl enable zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2

Now access to the address http://IP_DO_SERVIDOR/zabbix and follow the wizard.