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Creating automated PDF reports

Scheduled PDF reports allow Zabbix to automatically generate dashboards as PDF documents and distribute them by email. This feature requires the Zabbix Web Service, which uses a headless Google Chrome browser to render dashboards before converting them to PDF.

Installing the Zabbix Web Service

Install the required package.

Install the Zabbix Web Service

Red Hat 

sudo dnf install zabbix-web-service

Ubuntu 

sudo apt update
sudo apt install zabbix-web-service

Installing Google Chrome

The Zabbix Web Service requires the official Google Chrome browser. Although Chromium is available on several Linux distributions, unsupported versions (such as the Ubuntu Snap package) can prevent PDF generation from working correctly.

Install Google Chrome

Red Hat 

cat <<'EOF' | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo
[google-chrome]
name=Google Chrome
baseurl=https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
EOF

sudo dnf install google-chrome-stable

Ubuntu 

cd /tmp
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

Verify that Google Chrome has been installed successfully.

which google-chrome

Example output:

/usr/bin/google-chrome

If Chromium was previously installed as a Snap package on Ubuntu, remove it.

sudo snap remove chromium

Home Directory Issue

On both Ubuntu and Red Hat the zabbix-web-service package does not automatically create the home directory for the zabbix user. Without this directory, Google Chrome cannot start and PDF generation will fail.

Create the directory manually.

sudo install -d -o zabbix -g zabbix -m 0750 /var/lib/zabbix

Create the directories required by Google Chrome.

sudo -u zabbix mkdir -p \
    /var/lib/zabbix/.config \
    /var/lib/zabbix/.cache \
    /var/lib/zabbix/.local/share/applications

Verify that the zabbix user can write to its home directory.

sudo -u zabbix touch /var/lib/zabbix/test
sudo -u zabbix rm /var/lib/zabbix/test

Configuring the Zabbix Server

Edit the Zabbix Server configuration.

sudo vi /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

Configure the Web Service URL.

WebServiceURL=http://127.0.0.1:10053/report

Enable at least one report writer.

StartReportWriters=1

Restart both services.

sudo systemctl restart zabbix-web-service
sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server

Verifying the Installation

Verify that the Web Service is running.

systemctl status zabbix-web-service

You can also test whether the Web Service is listening.

curl http://127.0.0.1:10053/report

One final step before we can start creating our scheduled reports is configuration of the frontend URL. Go to Administration -> General -> Other. Fill in the Frontend URL field met the correct url of your frontend. This can be something like http://192.168.0.1/ or https://myzabbixurl/ or even https://my_zabbix_domain/zabbix/. This depends on how you have configured your frontend.

ch11.50-frontend-url.png

11.37 Frontend URL

Receiving an error indicating that the HTTP method is not supported is expected and confirms that the Web Service is operational. After configuring the Frontend URL, scheduled PDF reports can be created directly from the Zabbix frontend.

Warning

On Ubuntu 24.04, the Snap version of Chromium is not compatible with the Zabbix Web Service. Always install the official Google Chrome package and ensure that the /var/lib/zabbix home directory exists and is writable by the zabbix user. Otherwise, Chrome will fail to start and automated PDF report generation will not work.

Conclusion

Automated PDF reports make it easy to distribute dashboards to administrators, managers, and customers without requiring manual intervention.

By installing the Zabbix Web Service, configuring the Zabbix Server, and using a supported version of Google Chrome, you can automatically generate and email PDF reports directly from Zabbix.

Questions

  1. Which Zabbix component is responsible for generating scheduled PDF reports?
  2. Why is the Ubuntu Snap version of Chromium not supported?
  3. Which Zabbix Server parameters must be configured to enable PDF report generation?
  4. How can you verify that the Zabbix Web Service is running correctly?
  5. Which TCP port does the Zabbix Web Service use by default?

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