Zabbix Proxy Error: invalid field name "globalmacro.type"

Recently I’ve been standing up Zabbix for monitoring my systems for Resgrid and Consulting Clients. Due to how my network is segmented between my primary site and secondary site I needed to use the Zabbix Proxy feature to broker monitoring calls from one to the other.

This error seemed to prevent the Proxy from getting a list of monitored hosts that are behind it. I couldn’t find any information on the error, but I missed a critical part when install the proxy, it’s version MUST match the version of Zabbix Server that your are running. In my case I’m running Zabbix 5.2 but ‘apt-get’ installed Proxy 4.0.17 on Ubuntu 20.04.

So I uninstalled Zabbix Proxy and did the following.

wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.2/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_5.2-1+ubuntu$(lsb_release -rs)_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i zabbix-release_5.2-1+ubuntu$(lsb_release -rs)_all.deb
sudo apt update

After that I ran the cache command to see

apt-cache madison zabbix-proxy-mysql

zabbix-proxy-mysql | 1:5.2.2-1+ubuntu20.04 | http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.2/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages
zabbix-proxy-mysql | 1:4.0.17+dfsg-1 | http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 Packages

So you can see here, not I can install 5.2.2 and 4.0.17. Note if I just did another install it could pick the 4.0.17 version and I would be in the same boat. So I specified the version I wanted during the apt-get install.

sudo apt install zabbix-proxy-mysql=1:5.2.2-1+ubuntu20.04

After that, I able to install the proxy as normal, I did nuke the old db and used the new schema to ensure that was in sync as well. This article can guide you through the entire Proxy install and setup. Just make sure your using the correct version of the Proxy, 5.0 or 5.2 to match your Zabbix Server install.