How to monitor printer host status with zabbix

Question

I need to monitor host status of printers from zabbix. I managed to monitor the inklevel via SNMP. Any ideas to monitor printer reachable or not ?

Solution

First you should add a new host in zabbix agent. Then you can use either icmpping to monitor the availability of your printer or easily setup net.tcp.port[IP,PORT]. PORT here is the port opened on your printer. It can often be 515 (LPD), 9100 (for some HPs) or 80 (as many printers have an embedded web server). For an example setup you can check this (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/829/zabbix1.jpg/).

But if you want to setup a trigger based on icmpping after adding the host you should use this trigger instead:

{IP,PORT:icmpping.count(1800,0)}>0

which means that your printer was unreachable more than once in last 1800 seconds=30 minutes.

If you need to monitor several printers but not too many you can change the command to

{IP1,PORT1:icmpping.count(1800,0)}>0|{IP2,PORT2:icmpping.count(1800,0)>0}|...

which checks whether at least one printer was unreachable in last 30 minutes.

For necessary details please see this (https://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16887) and this (https://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1325). There are several images there defining monitored item using Simple check (the difference is that I suggested you to use icmpping not icmppingsec, which in fact are very similar) as well as definition of trigger itself.

Second, you should add hosts in configuration menu (where you define its IP, ports etc.). To define the trigger you can either link it to template or directly to host (let's call it new_host). In the second case you should select the added host, move to triggers and push create trigger. In trigger expression you should define this

{new_host:icmpping.count(1800,0)}>0

Comments

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Please, look my answer below on whether I correctly got your addition to the problem.

[Cuteboyucsc]

"Firstly you should new host in zabbix agent" didn't get that part. I'm monitoring other stuffs via snmp. Is it possible to create a template for all printers?

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

To define the IP and PORT you can consult this if you use windows(findmyip.org/find-network-printer-ip.php). Very similar setup is in linux as well. Waiting for your results.

[Cuteboyucsc]

sorry. I didnt mean i wan't to find an IP. I want to create a global template in zabbix to monitor the networked printers. So the procedure i usually use is create a template, define items and then define trigger and associate the template with all the printers. So you have given me the trigger as {IP1,PORT1:icmpping.count(1800,0)}>0 So i guess there should be an item "IP1,port1". So now i want to know how to create those items...

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Not necesserily. You can easily enter there the IP and PORT of a printer and everything should work fine.

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

You can look for the answer to your last post in the edited answer.

[Cuteboyucsc]

Thanks for your time again! I could configure some of the printers with icmp as you suggested. But the others doesn't support ping. So i configured another item with snmp. oid 1.3.6.1.2.1.25.3.5.1.1 gives the status of printer(secure.n-able.com/webhelp/NC_7-2-0_Cust_en/Content/N‌​-central/…). So if the host is down i wont get any data. So i need to configure a trigger for nodata for certain time for that item. How can i do that ? Thanks!

[Cuteboyucsc]

I guess i'm fine now. I don't need to monitor specific oid as i'm monitoring data receiving on/off. Used {My_Hp_printer:host.data.nodata(300)}=1 as trigger.... As i needed to monitor some other servers your method was useful!Thanks for your help!