NEMS Linux 1.7 Changelogs (2024-Present)

The NEMS 1.7 release cycle focusses on modernizing the codebase, complete with a move to 64-bit, Python 3.11 and venv, as well as an effort to further enhance the Enterprise user experience by including features that are geared specifically toward larger organizations.

During the NEMS Linux 1.7 development push, we introduced our first-ever Developer Lockdown, which ended with a live Google Meet call between our lead developer and users. It was a huge success, and made it possible for NEMS Linux 1.7 to be released. Thank you to everyone who supported Developer Lockdown! For more information: https://www.patreon.com/nems/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=Lockdown+2024

Release Dates

  • March 26, 2024 - NEMS Linux 1.7 for Raspberry Pi released to Patrons.

  • March 29, 2024 - NEMS Linux 1.7 for Raspberry Pi released to the public.

Release Notes

New Features

  • Raspberry Pi 5 support, including boot from USB, has been implemented in NEMS Linux 1.7.

  • AArch64 (ARM64) hypervisor support for Enterprise Edition Virtual Appliance.

  • NEMS Power Controller. Now you can safely reboot or shutdown your NEMS Server directly within NEMS Dashboard.

  • Created nems-configs package, which will include base configurations, starting with monit.

  • New check command check_pve - Check Proxmox Node.

  • New check command check_mssql_mem - Check memory usage on a MS SQL 2008, 2012 or 2019 server (SQL memory, not system).

  • New check command check_fortigate - Check Fortinet FortiGate devices with a number of useful checks.

  • New check command check_netscaler - Check Citrix Netscaler Application Delivery Controllers / load balancers.

Upgraded Features

  • Base upgraded to Bookworm.

  • PHP upgraded to 8.2.

  • Python moved to v3 stack due to 2.7 EOL, venv utilized. 3.11 is default with 3.9.2 also configured in update-alternatives.

  • livestatus upgraded to 2.1.0p37 (cannot go to 2.2 until Trixie due to GCC+-13 dependency).

  • Nagios Core upgraded and held back to 4.4.14 to ensure optimum stability (4.5.x currently has issues with livestatus segfault).

  • Nagios Mobile UI upgraded to 1.0.3 and then modified to support PHP 8.

  • NEMS API upgraded to support PHP 8.

  • NagiosTV upgraded to support PHP 8.

  • Adagios built into a Python 3.9.2 Virtual Environment.

  • Upgraded NagVis to 1.9.40, which includes PHP 8.2 support as well as other fixes since the previous 1.9.27 from NEMS 1.6.

  • NEMS NConf updated to support PHP 8. Several bug fixes.

  • NEMS Livestatus Full upgraded to support PHP 8.

Feature Improvements

  • monit now watches the state of Adagios and restarts the service if it fails.

  • NEMS Migrator now reconciles the NEMS SST configuration against the current running server, and imports your settings from backup appropriately.

  • NEMS Migrator output is more consistent and hides confidential information such as passwords during reconciliation.

  • NEMS Migrator’s nems-restore now imports additional credentials, including Windows Active Directory.

  • Raspberry Pi filesystem resizing on first boot is now done with NEMS Universal Filesystem Restore tool. This has been upgraded to support USB drives.

  • TEMPer device check commands enhanced to include perfdata and nicer output.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed nems-commits which shows changelogs on the official NEMS Linux web site, but was lacking a few important submodules (nems-migrator, nconf).

  • NEMS Migrator resource.cfg reconciliation now functions as expected (so settings such as SMTP are reflected in your restored configuration).

  • nems-init and nems-passwd now allow special characters, such as * in passwords.

  • nems-info cache file location check improved to store system user caches in /tmp/.nems_cache rather than attempting to save to a home folder, which was causing STDERR output in the logs since the folder didn’t exist.

  • Errors in NEMS NConf when saving hosts have been fixed. This bug affected 1.6 users.

  • NEMS documentation has been fixed to point to the current repository (was still pointing to Cat5TV which redirects, but ReadTheDocs stopped following the redirect, so content was beginning to fall stale).

Additional Notes

  • Iperf3 running as daemon.

  • Serial login enabled.

  • ARMhf support to be deprecated in favor of AArch64.

Known Issues at Release

The following issues exist at the time of release and will be fixed via nems-update.

NEMS Migrator will import hosts and assign them the Linux OS even if they are not Linux.

You may use the bulk edit feature in NEMS NConf to change the OS of your hosts in a few clicks. A future upgrade to NEMS Migrator will store this NConf data in a SQLite3 database for later reconciliation. Since it does not exist in the Nagios Config files, the association is lost upon import.

NEMS Migrator will remove all example hostgroups from NEMS NConf.

This, too, is due to nems-restore attempting to reconcile Nagios Config files to our NConf database. Since the Nagios Config files only contain hostgroups that are in use, the import gives the appearance of all others being deleted. In fact, it is that the only hostgroups it can import are the ones that are currently in the Nagios Config from the backup. This data will also be included in a future upgrade of NEMS Migrator where hidden data will be stored in a separate database to allow enhanced reconciliation during a nems-restore operation.

Cockpit will show the Argon ONE service as failed when a user does not have a Argon ONE device.

The Argon ONE service will be added to the Optional Services tab of NEMS SST and pushed out via a nems-update.

NEMS email notification failure recovery is unable to send missed messages due to a missing initialization of the $mail object.

This will be fixed and pushed out in a nems-update.