OpenWrt 23.05.0-rc4 - Fourth Release Candidate

[Hauke Mehrtens]

Hi,

The OpenWrt community is proud to announce the fourth release candidate 
of the upcoming OpenWrt 23.05 stable series.
OpenWrt 23.05.0-rc4 incorporates over 4200 commits since branching the 
previous OpenWrt 22.03 release and has been under development for over 
one year.

This is just a release candidate and not the final release yet.

Download firmware images using the OpenWrt Firmware Selector:
   * https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=23.05.0-rc4
Download firmware images directly from our download servers:
   * https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.0-rc4/targets/

Changes between OpenWrt 23.05.0-rc3 and 23.05.0-rc4
===================================================

Changes in this release candidate since the previous 23.05.0-rc3 release 
candidate are:

   * New devices
     * ipq4019: ZTE MF287 Pro aka DreiNeo Pro
     * mediatek: Ubiquiti UniFi 6 LR v3
     * ramips: ALFA Network AX1800RM
   * Updated components:
     * kernel: Update from 5.15.127 to 5.15.132
     * mt76: Updated from 2023-07-26 to 2023-08-14
     * hostapd: Update from 2023-06-22 to 2023-09-08
     * ucode: Update from 2023-04-03 to 2023-06-06
     * ubus: Update from 2022-06-15 to 2023-06-05
     * netifd: Update from 2023-06-04 to 2023-09-19
     * wireless-regdb: update from 2023.05.03 to 2023.09.01
     * openssl: Update from 3.0.10 to 3.0.11
   * mediatek: lots of backports from master
   * ipq806x: Fix traffic speed regression
   * mac80211: rework MT7620 PA/LNA RF calibration
   * kernel: enable vfio and vfio-pci for armsr-armv8
   * ath11k: Revert back ath11k firmware to fix IPv6 multicast problems
   * kernel: allow adding devices without hw offload to a hw flowtable
   * kernel: backport support for renaming netdevs while up
   * hostapd: backport from master, including ucode based reload support
   * packages: Add many PKG_CPE_ID attributes

Many other changes in all parts of OpenWrt, see Changelog for details.


Highlights in OpenWrt 23.05.0:
==============================

Many new devices added
======================

OpenWrt 23.05 supports over 1794 devices. Support for over 200 new 
devices was added in addition to the device support by OpenWrt 22.03.

  * The ipq807x target for the Qualcomm IPQ807x Wifi 6 SoCs was added
  * The mediatek/filogic subtarget for the Mediatek Filogic 830 and 630 
SoCs was added
  * The sifiveu target for the HiFive RISC-V Unleashed and Unmatched boards


Highlights of device support
============================

  * Switched ipq40xx target to DSA
  * VDSL support on AVM FRITZ!Box 7530
  * Support for devices with 2.5G PHYs
    * Acer Predator W6 (MT7986A)
    * Mercusys MR90X v1 (MT7986BLA)
    * Netgear WAX206 (MT7622)
    * Netgear WAX220 (MT7986)
    * ZyXEL NWA50AX Pro (MT7981)
    * Asus (TUF Gaming) AX4200 (MT7986A)
    * Netgear WAX218 (IPQ8074)
    * Xiaomi AX9000 (IPQ8074)
    * Dynalink DL-WRX36 (IPQ8074)
  *  2 Gbps WAN/LAN NAT Routing on ramips MT7621 devices
  * Improved DSL statistics on ubus and in LuCI


Switch from wolfssl to mbedtls as default
=========================================

OpenWrt switched the default cryptographic library from wolfssl to 
mbedtls. This library is used for HTTPS/TLS in the Webserver providing 
LuCI and for the cryptographic operations in hostapd. mbedtls provides 
security updates in their LTS branch without changing the application 
binary interface (ABI) of the library. wolfssl provides a stable ABI 
only for a very limited subset of functions. mbedtls allows us to update 
only mbedtls without the need to recompile and upgrade all users of mbedtls.


Core components update
======================

Core components have the following versions in 23.05.0-rc4:

  * Updated toolchain:
    * musl libc 1.2.4
    * glibc 2.37
    * gcc 12.3.0
    * binutils 2.40
  * Updated Linux kernel
    * 5.15.132 for all targets
  * Network:
    * hostapd master snapshot from September 2023
    * dnsmasq 2.89
    * dropbear 2022.82
  * cfg80211/mac80211 from kernel 6.1.24
  * System userland:
    * busybox 1.36.1

-----------------

Full release notes and upgrade instructions are available at
https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/notes-23.05.0-rc4

In particular, make sure to read the regressions and known issues before 
upgrading:
https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/notes-23.05.0-rc4#known_issues

For a detailed list of all changes since 23.05.0-rc3, refer to
https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/changelog-23.05.0-rc4

To download the 23.05.0-rc4 images, navigate to:
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.0-rc4/targets/
Use OpenWrt Firmware Selector to download:
https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=23.05.0-rc4

As always, a big thank you goes to all our active package maintainers, 
testers, documenters and supporters.

Have fun!

The OpenWrt Community

---

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