NEMS Linux 1.8 Changelogs (2026-Present)

NEMS 1.8 is a future release currently under heavy development.

Key Development Features and Goals:

  • Firewall - NEMS Linux was originally set to include `ConfigServer Security & Firewall (csf) with Login Failure Daemon (lfd)`_. However, that project has been abandoned. A different firewall may be implemented. Internal LAN IP addresses are whitelisted by default, but if a user tries to access your NEMS server from outside the LAN (ie., if you have your NEMS server accessible on the Internet) they will get locked out if they try an incorrect password too many times.

  • Add IPMI (freeipmi) if not added already.

  • Begin work on smart home assistant integration: NEMS Skill for Alexa and Google Assistant.

July 20-25, 2026 - NEMS Linux 1.8 is the primary focus of the 3rd annual NEMS Developer Lockdown.

Changelogs

  • [Security] nemsadmin user no longer supports passwordless login. See https://github.com/NEMSLinux/nems-scripts/issues/6

  • [New Feature] check_rpi_watchdog - Monitor state of Raspberry Pi’s built-in watchdog. See https://github.com/NEMSLinux/nems-admin/issues/19

  • [Bug Fix] nems-info username now correctly obtains the nemsuser value from config.

  • [Improvement] nems-info username fallback to htpasswd now restricts result to first username since NEMS Linux 1.8 introduces multi-user support. The first user in the htpasswd will be the nemsuser from nems-init since it was added at file creation time.

  • [Improvement] nems-info users now offers an optional variable plain which strips the human-readable text, resulting in only a number being output.

  • [Bug Fix] Livestatus join typo fixed in nems-api within nems-www. See https://github.com/NEMSLinux/nems-www/issues/1

  • [Upgrade] Nagios Core upgraded to 4.5.13.

  • [Infrastructure] Repos server upgraded.

  • [Infrastructure] Repos GPG key renewed and deployed.

  • [Upgrade] Debian Linux base system upgraded from Bookwork to Trixie.

  • [Upgrade] nems-prep updated to modern standards.

  • [Upgrade] ntp to ntpsec - a secure, hardened, and streamlined open-source implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP).

  • [Upgrade] libgpiod2 upgraded to libgpiod3 to make nems-scripts installable on NEMS Linux 1.8 (based on Debian Trixie).

  • [Upgrade] nrpe upgraded to 4.1.3 (final).

  • [Bug Fix] nems-plugins check_snmp now creates user scratch folder for state information. See https://github.com/NEMSLinux/nems-plugins/issues/5

  • [Improvement] nems-scripts dhtxx 2.1 fixes JSON output on retries (was outputting notices to output rather than STDERR). Improved dynamic GPIO pin detection. Readied script for updates to check_dhtxx.

  • [Upgrade] nems-plugins OpenJDK upgraded to version 25.

  • [Improvement] nems-plugins check_dhtxx 1.1 Added optional GPIO pin parameter ($ARG6$) and improved PHP 8 json_decode handling.

  • [Improvement] nems-plugins automatically replace obsolete plugins from monitoring-plugins-basic if we have a custom version.

  • [Improvement] apt-listchanges has been removed. Due to changes in the Trixie python stack, it causes errors, and is not required (or even desired).

  • [Upgrade] NagiosTV to 0.9.11 (NEMS Tactical Overview).

  • [Upgrade] Python now 3.13.5 but 3.9 is still installed for Adagios in an isolated folder.

  • [Improvement] nems-docs now has a nems-docs-debpack which makes nems-docs installable via apt. This is important as the new nems-ai application uses the NEMS documentation as its source of truth for NEMS information.

  • [New Feature] nems-ai is a proof-of-concept, entirely optional (you have to install it) application that allows chat-style queries against NEMS documentation and general knowledge via a locally-running AI engine, with no external servers utilized. Private, compliant, and potentially useful in time.

  • [Bug Fix] nems-plugins now creates a venv at /opt/nems-venv for pywbem and check_esxi_* since pywbem was conflicting with deb package causing build to fail at 052.

  • [Upgrade] check_mk Livestatus required compatibility with Trixie. Create makefile from Debian 12 and now compiles successfully.

  • [Upgrade] LuaJIT no longer offers tarbal packages. Upgrade from 2.1.0-beta3 to current build (2.1.1784580905 at time of development). Now achieving build level 161.

  • [Upgrade] Adagios refactored to use the new nems-venv Python 3.9 environment.

  • [Upgrade] With Nagios Core being upgraded to 4.5.13, combined with the lack of a Debian 13 makefile in the last working version, mk-livestatus could no longer be compiled against NEMS Linux 1.8. So I wrote a patch into the installer for both Nagios (052) to store the source and headers in a persistent location, and the check_mk build script (055) to use those headers to patch the source before compiling. Now, Checkmk Livestatus is compatible with modern Nagios, now and in future.

  • [Bug Fix] Python (038) hold back buildpackages to version 82 due to removal of pkg_resources, which is still required by Adagios. Rework the Adagios build script (180) to install needed packages.

  • [Bug Fix] Monitorix used the old xfonts-terminus font, which is broken on RRDTool in NEMS Linux 1.8 (or Trixie for that matter). Replaced with compatible and working newer package fonts-terminus and now graphs appear correctly.