zbx-cli

Pure-shell Zabbix CLI for hosts where Python is unavailable or forbidden — git-style subcommands, TSV/CSV/JSON output, composable with standard Unix tools.

Why

The official Zabbix tooling requires Python. On locked-down servers, OT hosts, or minimal containers there may be no Python interpreter, no pip, and no desire to install one. zbx-cli is a collection of bash scripts that talk to the Zabbix JSON-RPC API using only curl and jq. Because every subcommand writes plain text to stdout, output pipes naturally into awk, grep, cut, and other Unix primitives already present on the host.

Quick start

# System-wide install
make install

# Or install without root
make install-user   # installs to ~/.local/bin

# Configure
zbx config init
zbx config set ZABBIX_URL https://zabbix.example.com/api_jsonrpc.php
zbx config set ZABBIX_USER apiuser
zbx config set ZABBIX_PASS secret123

# Verify
zbx ping            # prints "pong"
zbx version         # shows API version and authenticated user

# Common operations
zbx hosts-list
zbx problems
zbx search hosts web --format csv --headers
zbx macro-set web01 '{ENV}' prod
zbx ack 12345 "Investigating"

How it works

• bin/zbx — dispatcher, git-style. Discovers all zbx-* executables on $PATH and delegates to them. Handles global flags (--insecure, --cacert, --capath) before dispatch.
• bin/zbx-lib — shared library: authentication, session token caching (30-minute lifetime; falls back to API token mode via ZABBIX_API_TOKEN), and the zbx_call JSON-RPC helper.
• bin/zbx-call — low-level JSON-RPC invoker; accepts params on stdin and an optional jq filter argument. Useful for ad-hoc API calls.
• Subcommands cover hosts, templates, macros, problems, triggers, maintenance windows, items, history, trends, discovery, and inventory.
• tools/gen-completions.sh generates Bash tab-completions from each subcommand's -h output.
• tests/ — unit tests using a mock curl shim; integration tests run against a real Zabbix endpoint (read-only).

Configuration

Config file at ~/.config/zbx/config.sh (user) or /etc/zbx/config.sh (system). Manage with zbx config:

Variable	Description
ZABBIX_URL	Full JSON-RPC endpoint URL
ZABBIX_USER / ZABBIX_PASS	Credentials for session auth
ZABBIX_API_TOKEN	Bearer token (skips session auth)
ZABBIX_VERIFY_TLS	1 (default) or 0 to skip TLS verification
ZABBIX_CA_CERT	Path to custom CA certificate
ZABBIX_TOKEN_FILE	Override session token cache path

Status

Actively maintained.

License

MIT