Nagios Support Forum

We're in the process of buying NagiosXI commercially, however i've used the software a number of years ago in my old company so while a bit rusty now, i am also familiar with it. To get back into things I find that NagiosCSP has the promo key '25YEARSOFNAGIOS!' as stated in SLICENCE.TXT and appears to be idea for me for monitoring my personal home systems.

This worked on the CSP-latest.iso which is a 2024Rx version. Licencing was happy with the banner stating the limations in the SLICENCE.TXT file.
I then added 26 devices via autodiscovery.
Then i notice the update icon so i upgrade to 2026R1.

now i'm getting "Critical You have exceeded your license limits. Upgrade your license / Enter your new license key" in the top banner of the XI webUI.
i have found some posts mentioning the CSP50 code, and a quick skim read through the posts, looks like it might be version locked. Is this the case here? if so, it really needs to be clearer that it's version dependent and not to upgrade.
The error does seem to sugest the key is valid though (so not a version problem) and i've just exceeded a limit somewhere but it's not clear what.

The CSP50 code was a limited code that is no longer supported as of around 2026R1. The anniversary license will continue to work, but is limited to 10 nodes; If you surpass that number, you will be unable to add/edit hosts/services.

that explains CSP50, but what about the 25YEARSOFNAGIOS! code i'm actually using - similar deal?
i assume it's an online activation so if it was expired/changed then i would've seen the same issue on the 2024Rx version.

Makes sense if the promo key was tied to certain builds only. Maybe worth checking the /usr/local/nagiosxi/scripts/licence_check.py or similar script in 2016R1, it might reference the promo codes directly. If it’s version-locked, we might be able to confirm that from there.

Hi everyone,

I’m in a similar situation, but I wanted to push things a bit further for testing purposes and share what I’ve found.

I’ve tested the latest version 2024R1.4.4 using the 25-Year key:

• - Worked fine, also with the CSP50 key.
  - After upgrading to 2026R1, it initially recognized both licenses and allowed me to use premium plugins — great for small homelab environments.
  - Eventually, I received a warning that my setup exceeded the activation key limits (10 hosts, 53 services, ~14% usage).

The Host Treemap dashlet is currently bugged (as mentioned in other threads) and supposedly fixed in newer builds — but since the latest updates invalidate these keys, free users can’t update without losing license benefits.
Does this mean we’re stuck without the fixed dashlets if we rely on the free or anniversary keys?

Additional Testing
I also tested an older version (2024R1.3.2) with CSP50, which does work and doesn’t throw many errors:

• - Allows adding more hosts, near the dashboard limit.
  - However, multiple dashlets are broken (transparency, resizing, etc.).
  - Some devices discovered via Network Device Discovery constantly flap for no clear reason (e.g., UPS units, IP cameras).
  - The version itself feels quite deprecated.

Question to the Devs / Maintainers
Can any Nagios developer or maintainer shed some light on this?
Right now, it seems that free users (CSP50 / 25YEARANNIVERSARY) can’t properly use or update Nagios due to these issues — and I haven’t seen any official acknowledgment or workaround so far.

Thanks in advance for any insights!

Hi all,

CSP50 and the 25 year key are perpetual licenses to specific versions of Nagios XI. In different versions, those keys allow different numbers of hosts to be monitored. Those do not guarantee upgradability to new versions at similar feature levels.

If you would like to return to a previous specific version of Nagios XI, this forum post talks about how to do so: viewtopic.php?t=44292

Thanks,

Aaron
Product Development Manager

thanks for confirming the version tie-in. makes sense but wasn't clear that the keys were version locked.