Teach Zabbix to monitor service status

You can also add the following UserParameters in zabbix_agentd.conf to monitor service status in systemd systems. For non-systemd the OS doesn't really monitor service status, the various bash script "status" arguments are often unreliable.

UserParameter=systemd.unit.is-active[*],systemctl is-active --quiet '$1' && echo 1 || echo 0
UserParameter=systemd.unit.is-failed[*],systemctl is-failed --quiet '$1' && echo 1 || echo 0
UserParameter=systemd.unit.is-enabled[*],systemctl is-enabled --quiet '$1' && echo 1 || echo 0

And then e.g. for sshd status create an item with a key like:

systemd.unit.is-active[sshd]

If Linux services are managed by systemd (Centos 7+, Ubuntu 16+, ...), then you can use https://github.com/cavaliercoder/zabbix-module-systemd. It uses standard systemd D-Bus communication - that's what systemctl does under the hood.