An invalid entry when restarting zabbix-agent issue may appear when the configuration file is present in the wrong path.

Here at Bobcares, we have seen several such errors while troubleshooting Zabbix issues as part of our Server Management Services for web hosts and online service providers.

Today, let us see how our Support Engineers resolve this Zabbix problem.

How to fix the error ‘invalid entry when restarting zabbix-agent’

Recently, one of our customers approached us saying that the Zabbix server reports that MySQL on the database server is down, while it is up.

He told that the configuration files my.cnf is ignored when put in the path /etc/zabbix/. However, when put in /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d it is used.

Also, he tried to restart the Zabbix agent. Restarting the Zabbix-agent throws an error message as below.

Starting Zabbix agent: zabbix_agentd [12334]: invalid entry [[mysql]] (not following "parameter=value" notation) in config file [/etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d//.my.cnf], line 1

Now let us see how our Support Engineers resolve this error message.

First, we move the .my.cnf file from /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d directory to /etc/zabbix. Also, we remove any Include entry to refer to the .my.cnf file (if there is any). The content of the file may look like as shown below:

[mysqld]
user=username
password=userpass

[mysqladmin]
user=username
password=userpass

We also make sure that the user listed here exists and have the necessary permissions in MySQL.

Then we edit /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d/userparameter_mysql.conf file.

Here, in order to point to the right file we replace

HOME=/var/lib/zabbix

with

HOME=/etc/zabbix

Finally, we restart the agent by running the below command.

service zabbix-agent restart

This must resolve the error message.

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Conclusion

In short, an invalid entry when restarting the zabbix-agent issue may appear when the configuration file is placed in the wrong path. Today, we saw the resolution our Support Engineers provide to this Zabbix error.