Zabbix, disable items on hosts created via template discovery rules

What:

Zabbix 2.4 on Ubuntu server

Problem:

You have "discovery rules" defined in your template, you link that template to the host, after a while host is populated with many items. Now you decided to disable some of the items, in template > item prototypes you change status to Disabled, that should be inherited by host, but it's not. This behaviour is apparently by design, more info here.

Solution:

1. Log on to your Ubuntu server
2. Connect to zabbix mysql database

$ mysql -u<username> -p zabbix

3. Create select query to get items which you would like to disable

SELECT name, status from items WHERE status=0 AND name LIKE '%Error%';

 4. If everything looks good, change status to 1, which will disable items

UPDATE items SET status=1 WHERE status=0 AND name LIKE '%Error%';