Via the JSON-RPC API, users are currently unable to create a host based on a hostgroup that was defined during the initial setup, (groups 1-5). This was attempted with various users with various permissions, even the administrative user with full privileges to everything. I am using the PHP API for Zabbix that I created for this, but I'm sure this would hold true for any API calls. For example, if you attempt to call the following...

ZabbixAPI::query('host','create',array('host'=>'test','groups'=>array(2)));

It returns the following error...

[ CHost::create ] You do not have enough rights for operation

But if I first create a group, manually or with the API, then it works fine. So I can do the following for example...

ZabbixAPI::query('hostgroup','create',array('name'=>'testgroup'));
$new_group_id = ZabbixAPI::fetch_string('hostgroup','get',array('pattern'=>'testgroup'));
$result = ZabbixAPI::query('host','create',array('host'=>'test','groups'=>array($new_group_id)));

And this will complete properly, a host will be created, tied to the new testgroup I created. This is rather... odd.

Here are two of my comments on this topic.

First, why does a host REQUIRE a group (hostgroup) when in the Zabbix web interface it does not? I would prefer to be able to create hosts without having to associate them with groups. This seems like a unnecessary requirement.

Second, of course, this is also a bug and needs to be able to add servers to the existing 5 hostgroups.

Cheers!