Supported platforms¶
Support policy is being formalized
The matrix below reflects the current state. The exact set of supported versions, the cadence of legacy builds, and the long-term plan for Windows XP support are still being finalised and may change.
NSClient++ is built for three operating system families: Windows, Linux and macOS.
Windows¶
There are two Windows editions:
| Edition | Supported on | Installer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | Windows Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7 and later | MSI (recommended) | The mainline build. New features and fixes land here first. |
| Legacy | Windows XP (latest Service Pack), Server 2003 | Manual install only | Best-effort build for older systems. The MSI installer is not supported on XP; the binaries need to be deployed and registered as a service by hand. |
Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are produced for the standard edition; pick the one that matches the host architecture.
Linux¶
NSClient++ runs on most modern Linux distributions. There is no single “minimum version” — what matters is that the C++ runtime and OpenSSL versions in the distribution are recent enough for the packaged build to load. The releases page lists packages for the distributions that are tested for each release.
macOS¶
macOS support is experimental
It installs and runs as a launchd daemon, but it ships a smaller set of check modules than Windows and Linux (see below), and the packaging - the install layout, the service account, the launchd job - may still change between releases. Treat an upgrade as something to read the notes for rather than apply blind.
macOS builds are Apple silicon (arm64) only and are published as a .pkg
installer plus a tarball of the same tree; both bundle their dependencies, so
neither needs Homebrew on the target. The minimum macOS version is the one the
release was built on, because the package carries the dependency libraries
built for it; the installer refuses anything older rather than failing at
launch. There is no Intel build, and Rosetta 2 does not substitute for one.
The packages are not yet signed with a Developer ID or notarized, so Gatekeeper
blocks a double-click install. Install from the command line
(sudo installer -pkg ... -target /) or right-click and choose Open.
Two modules are not built for macOS, because their data sources are Linux
kernel interfaces: CheckDisk (mntent and /proc/diskstats) and
CheckLogFile (inotify). That means no disk, mount, file or log-file checks
on macOS yet, and no storage facts. CheckSystem is built, with its CPU,
memory, process, uptime, launchd service, network, package and battery checks
and the host, network and software facts; a few values Darwin does not have
are reported as unknown rather than 0. Two network checks are reduced:
check_connections answers “not implemented” and check_ping cannot open its
raw socket as the unprivileged service account. Everything else - the REST API
and web UI, the NRPE/NSCA/NSCP/check_mk listeners and clients, external
scripts, the Lua script engine, the other network checks, the security checks,
the scheduler and the forwarders - is present; the Python script engine builds
from source but is not in the package. See Installing on
macOS for the full picture.
Architectures¶
- Windows: x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit)
- Linux: x86_64 and arm64
- macOS: arm64 (Apple silicon) only
Choosing an edition on Windows¶
If the target machine runs Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 or newer, use the standard edition — that is the only edition that receives new features.
The legacy edition only exists so that older estates (typically Windows XP and Server 2003) can still report into a modern monitoring server. New deployments should not start on the legacy edition.