OpenWrt 23.05.0 - First Stable Release - 13 October 2023

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 OpenWrt 23.05.0, r23497-6637af95aa
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The OpenWrt community is proud to announce the first stable release of the OpenWrt 23.05 stable series.

Download firmware images via the Firmware Selector or directly from our download servers:

• Download firmware image for your device (firmware selector)
• Download firmware images directly from OpenWrt download servers

An upgrade from OpenWrt 22.03 to OpenWrt 23.05 is supported in many cases with the help of the sysupgrade utility which will also attempt to preserve the configuration. A configuration backup is advised nonetheless when upgrading to OpenWrt 23.05. (see “Upgrading” below).

The OpenWrt Project is a Linux operating system targeting embedded devices. It is a complete replacement for the vendor-supplied firmware of a wide range of wireless routers and non-network devices. See the Table of Hardware for supported devices. For more information about OpenWrt project organization, see the About OpenWrt pages.

Do you want to be informed about important changes such as new releases and security fixes?

We have a new mailing list for this, as well as RSS options: see Important changes and announcements.

OpenWrt 23.05.0 incorporates over 4300 commits since branching the previous OpenWrt 22.03 release and has been under development for over one year.

Only the main changes are listed below. See changelog-23.05.0 for the full changelog.

OpenWrt 23.05 supports over 1790 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

• 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), GL.iNet GL-MT6000 (MT7986A), ZyXEL EX5700 (MT7986)
• Support for Wifi 6E (6GHz)
  • Acer Predator W6 (MT7986A), ZyXEL EX5700 (MT7986)
• 2 Gbps WAN/LAN NAT Routing on ramips MT7621 devices (See OpenWrt forum)
• Improved DSL statistics on ubus and in LuCI
• Added Arm SystemReady (EFI) compliant target armsr replacing the armvirt target

OpenWrt has transitioned its default cryptographic library from wolfssl to mbedtls. This shift brings several changes and implications:

• Size Efficiency: mbedtls is considerably smaller, making it an optimal choice for systems where storage space is paramount.
• LTS and ABI Stability: mbedtls consistently provides updates via its Long Term Support (LTS) branch, ensuring both security and a stable application binary interface (ABI). In contrast, wolfssl does not offer an LTS release, and its stable ABI is limited to a specific set of functions.
• TLS 1.3 Support: Users should be aware that mbedtls 2.28 no longer supports TLS 1.3.

While mbedtls is now the default, users who have specific needs or preferences can still manually switch back to wolfssl or choose openssl.

This release introduces the ability to include rust-written programs into the OpenWrt package infrastructure. Examples are: bottom, maturin, aardvark-dns and ripgrep.

Core components have the following versions in 23.05.0:

• Updated toolchain:
  • musl libc 1.2.4
  • glibc 2.37
  • gcc 12.3.0
  • binutils 2.40
• Updated Linux kernel
  • 5.15.134 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

In addition to the listed applications, many others were also updated.

Sysupgrade can be used to upgrade a device from 22.03 to 23.05, and configuration will be preserved in most cases.

Sysupgrade from 21.02 to 23.05 is not officially supported.

• ipq40xx EA6350v3, EA8300 and MR8300 require tweak to the U-Boot environment on update from 22.03 to 23.05. Refer to the Device wiki or the instruction on sysupgrade on how to do this change. Config needs to be reset on sysupgrade.

• lantiq/xrx200 target is not build because the DSA driver for the integrated GSWIP switch shows some error messages. (see: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/13200)
• bcm53xx: Netgear R8000 and Linksys EA9200 Ethernet is broken (see: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues/13548)
• default gateway setting is not applied when using the wifi device in station mode. (see: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues/13598)
• The prebuilt images for Zyxel NR7101 are currently broken and will brick your device. PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL. (bug already fixed but require SNAPSHOT or self-compile)
• realtek: there is currently a problem with MAC address getting wiped on installing 23.05.0. A fix is in progress has been merged and the correct MAC address will be restored on 23.05.1 (see: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/13622)
• OpenWrt 23.05.0 was signed with the wrong signing keys. The keys from OpenWrt snapshot were used for OpenWrt 23.05.0 including the release candidates. A later OpenWrt 23.05 service release will use a different key.
• In Mesh only configuration for WiFi 2.4GHz, force 40MHz option is ignored and doesn't work. Problem has been bisected, fixed in main and backported in 23.05. Normal function will be restored on 23.05.1 (see: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/13909)

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

Have fun!

The OpenWrt Community