IIAB 8.3 Release Notes

DRAFT

Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) 8.3 rolling releases are thoroughly tested — and can be installed today — anybody can build a beautiful digital library for their school, clinic or community:

  🍓 download.iiab.io 🍓

See our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ.IIAB.IO) and consider installing today!

Why not build your own LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA with a $35 Raspberry Pi 4 or $50 Raspberry Pi 5 ?

About

Internet-in-a-Box brings the Internet's crown jewels and the very best of the World’s Free Knowledge (Wikipedia, Khan Academy, OpenStreetMap, E-Books, etc) to those who are burning for learning — but just happen to be offline.

Use drag-and-drop to customize this "Learning Hotspot" with local gems too — tailored to the needs of your school, your library, your prison, your region and/or your very own family!

Can you contribute a screencast or grassroots video to help Internet-in-a-Box teachers in all countries?

What's New?

• IIAB lets you install completely new maps, satellite photos and 3D terrain as of 2026 — this builds on OpenStreetMap and many other free/open knowledge projects! Please read the instructions.
• IIAB lets you add YouTube and Vimeo videos (and local videos, e.g. from teachers' phones) to your Calibre-Web learning library. _{PR #3694}
• Uploading your own local/community content to IIAB is now much easier. _{PR #3784}
• Not only can students browse teachers' USB flash drives — "immediately" after their teacher inserts a content-rich flash drive into the classroom's IIAB — but students can also now "instantly" upload homework to their teacher's flash drive!
• IIAB core software can be rapidly updated using the new iiab-update command. _{PR #3768}
• IIAB works with the latest OS's like Raspberry Pi OS "Trixie", Debian 13 "Trixie", Linux Mint 22, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Trisquel 12 ! _{PR #4014}
• Kolibri Channels (and any Kolibri Channel subsets) should be selectable in advance, for faster installation of content (COMING SOON!) _{learningequality/kolibri#10384 PR iiab-admin-console#556}
• In 2026, the final release of IIAB 8.3 (GitHub Milestone, Roadmap Ideas) will build on IIAB 8.2. Please connect with your suggestions, and join us making this major release happen!

What's Upgraded?

• Calibre-Web (upstream docs, 0.6.26+ upstream releases, IIAB commit log) allows you to build an e-book and audiobook library for your community or school. It's being refined to allow you to add YouTube and Vimeo videos (and local videos, e.g. from teachers' phones). Use it with customizable URLs like box/books, box/libros, box/livres _{PR #3503 PR #3694}
• Kolibri 0.19.3+ replaces KA Lite (changelog, blog, docs). Peer import of channels from "Local network or internet" is now fixed, and new languages like Haitian Creole (Kreyòl ayisyen) added. IIAB now tries to install Kolibri with the PPA method, making it easy to upgrade using apt update etc. Use Kolibri with URL box/kolibri _{PR #4006}
• Kiwix 3.8.2 (changelog), based on libzim 9.4.0 (9.7.0 coming soon, see changelog) and libkiwix 14.1.1 (14.2.1 coming soon, see changelog), with URL box/kiwix _{PR #3600}
• Moodle 5.2.0+ (v5.2 features, technical announcement, release notes / changelog, release calendar, FAQ, docs) with URL box/moodle (NOTE that IIAB attempts to install the latest weekly pre-release of Moodle 5.3 if a bleeding-edge OS with PHP > 8.5 is detected.) Moodle 5.3 LTS ETA 2026-10-05. _{PR #4375}
• Nextcloud 33.0.3+ (changelog, release schedule, docs) requires PHP 8.2+. Nextcloud 34 ETA 2026-06-09. Use Nextcloud with URL box/nextcloud _{PR #3670}
• WordPress 6.9.4+ (6.9 field guide, 6.8 field guide, 6.7 field guide, 6.6 field guide, 6.5 field guide, 6.4 field guide, 6.3 field guide, 6.2 field guide, 6.1 field guide, 6.0 field guide). WordPress 7.0 ETA 2026-04-09. With URL box/wordpress _{PR #3210}
• MediaWiki 1.44.3 (release notes, summary, announcements, changelog). 1.46 ETA May or June 2026. With URL box/wiki _{PR #4169}
• Matomo 5.10.0+ (changelog, releases) is like Google Analytics, but emphasizes privacy and data ownership. With URL box/matomo _{PR #3460}
• JupyterHub 5.4.6+ (changelog, releases) e.g. for data science students, with URL box/jupyterhub _{PR #3476}
• Sugarizer 1.9.0 (changelog) using Sugarizer Server 1.5.0 (changelog) with URL box/sugarizer (using MongoDB 5.0 on 64-bit ARM, and MongoDB 6.0 on x86_64) _{PR #3478 PR #3519 PR #3972}
• Luanti 5.16.1+ (changelog, releases) is like Minecraft, but truly open source! _{PR #3985}
• Node-RED 4.1.10+ (changelog, docs) with URL box/nodered _{PR #3248}
• AzuraCast 0.23.6+ (changelog, releases, docs) for radio-style MP3 streaming, with URL box:12080 _{PR #2946 PR #3384}
• Gitea 1.26.2+ (changelog, blog) lightweight self-hosted "GitHub" version control system, to learn to code collaboratively, with URL box/gitea _{PR #3744}
• Asterisk 22 and FreePBX 17 telephony server (IIAB guide) run on Debian 12 Bookworm (PHP 8.2) and Ubuntu 24.04 (PHP 8.3). The Bookworm version of 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS (PHP 8.2) quite likely (might) also work. With URL box/freepbx (NGINX) and/or box:83/freepbx (Apache) _{PR #3863}
• Transmission 4.1.1 (changelog, commit log) overhauled BitTorrent infra for FAST content downloads, can be compiled live during IIAB install. _{PR #3690}
• Remote.It 5.5.1+ (desktop/mobile app download) to remotely support your IIAB — see also “How can I remotely manage my Internet-in-a-Box?” _{PR #3611}
• Node.js 24 (releases, changelog, release schedule) support. _{PR #4020}
• PHP 8.4 support, for 2025 OS's like Debian 13 Trixie. PHP 8.5 (released 2025-11-20) will also work increasingly with most IIAB apps, in preparation for 2026 OS's. _{PR #3656 PR #3791}
• phpMyAdmin 5.2.3 (changelog) for remote administration of MySQL. _{PR #4114}
• ansible-core 2.20 (changelog, end-of-life schedule) with ansible-core 2.21 ETA 2026-05-18, as implemented by scripts/ansible _{#4030 PR #4131}

Known Issues

• Problematic lines can appear at the bottom of /library/www/html/home/menu.json after a few hours, disabling your IIAB's home page, until the IIAB is rebooted: #3487 #3602 #3781
• The sudo iiab-network command doesn't cleanly recognize Wi-Fi routers (or Access Points) that you attach to IIAB with an Ethernet cable, with recent OS's like Ubuntu 24.04. Manual workarounds can help: #3330 #3385 (comment)
• A few residual issues may remain at: github.com/iiab/iiab/milestone/11