Frequently Asked Questions

My browser warns, “Your connection is not secure”. Why?

NEMS Linux uses SSL (aka https) connections to secure your connection and the data you transmit and receive to and from your NEMS server. This is accomplished using what is called a self-signed certificate. By nature, self-signed certificates are considered “untrusted” by your browser because, simply put, anyone can make them. It does not mean your connection is not encrypted or secure, but rather it means your browser cannot determine who created the certificate, and therefore they cannot verify your security. If you visited a web site, say google.com and received a warning that your connection is not secure, you should immediately stop what you’re doing and not proceed. However, in the case of NEMS Linux, which is a local server on your network (not a “dot com” on the web), you can safely trust the self-signed certificates and add an exception to your browser.

See this documentation for more details.

How do I configure WiFi?

See the Wireless Network Interfaces section of the Networking documentation.

How do I set a static IP address?

See the IP Address/DNS Settings section of the Networking documentation.

Why does Cockpit have greyed-out features? I can’t change anything!

As per the Cockpit docs: make sure you also check the box “use my password for privileged tasks” while logging in. Otherwise your level of access will match the non-elevated user and all features which require root access will be greyed out.

Why does NEMS Linux “call home” so much?

If you’re running a custom DNS server or monitoring DNS lookups, you’ll see a lot of requests for nemslinux.com. If you’ve enabled NEMS Check-In, NEMS will do a DNS lookup for nemslinux.com every 5 minutes. That’s 288 requests per day. Then, there is the nems-info online command, which pings nemslinux.com to simply determine if you have an Internet connection. This is required every time NEMS Linux runs a command that requires Internet connectivity. It checks for that connection first, and if successful, it resumes. Else, it does not go through with the command since no Internet connection is detected. This is probably where you’re seeing the most lookups. Then, there are API requests, such as when it checks to see if you are authenticated with the NEMS Cloud Services server, which will occur at various times depending on what checks are occurring and what you are doing (E.G., if you open NEMS SST, it will immediately check). Another one is that you may have a sample check command which pings nemslinux.com to see if it is up or down. You can remove that check if it exists using NEMS NConf.

Why is NEMS using so much bandwidth?

NEMS Linux includes a small handful of sample check commands to get you started, and one of those is an Internet Speedtest which uses Ookla’s Speedtest service to monitor and report your Internet speed. For more information, please read Check Command: check_internet_speed.