Zabbix Template to monitor available package upgrades in hosts

Zabbix template that monitors hosts for available package upgrades in Debian / Ubuntu / "apt" package manager distros.

The script runs apt-get update to update source lists and then runs apt-get upgrade -s in simulation mode (no upgrade is executed). Data is then send to Zabbix server in various formats. A problem will be shown in the dashboard in case there is > 1 packages to update.

Overview

Zabbix Server version: 6.0

Sample output of apt-get upgrade -s from which we extract the info for the template:

The following packages have been kept back:
  zabbix-frontend-php
The following packages will be upgraded:
  zabbix-agent zabbix-apache-conf zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-sql-scripts
4 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

Versions

This template was tested on:

• Zabbix Server 6.0 (LTS)
• Zabbix Agent (daemon) 5.0.21
• Debian 11

Setup

On Zabbix frontend server:

• Download and import either server_template_check_apt_updates_templates.xml, server_template_check_apt_updates_templates.json or server_template_check_apt_updates_templates.yml to Zabbix frontend.

• Assign the Template Debian APT Updates to the host(s) you want to monitor

On all hosts you want to monitor:

• Install packages zabbix-agent and zabbix-sender:

  apt-get install zabbix-agent zabbix-sender

• Copy content or download apt_upgrade_agent_script.sh script and move into host folder (Example): /etc/zabbix/custom_scripts

  wget https://github.com/Moluss/zabbix-template-apt-upgrade-monitoring/tree/main/agent_scripts

• Grant exec permissions

  sudo chmod +x /etc/zabbix/custom_scripts/apt_upgrade_agent_script

• Add entry to crontab (sudo crontab -e) to execute the script periodically to check for updates and then check for possible upgrades and send data to Zabbix Server. This cron will run every 12 hours:

  `0 */12 * * * sh /etc/zabbix/custom_scripts/apt_upgrade_agent_script.sh