OpenWrt 22.03.0-rc1 first release candidate

Release and security announcements
1

Hi,

The OpenWrt community is proud to announce the first release candidate of the upcoming OpenWrt 22.03 stable version series. It incorporates over 3400 commits since branching the previous OpenWrt 21.02 release and has been under development for about one year.

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

Download firmware images directly from our download servers:

Main changes from OpenWrt 21.02:

Firewall4 based on nftables

Firewall4 is used by default instead of firewall3 in the OpenWrt default images. Firewall4 uses nftables instead of iptables to configure the Linux netfilters.

Firewall4 uses the same UCI firewall configuration. Old firewall configurations should still work with firewall4, using nftables now. The extra option which allowed to add custom iptables commands does not work any more.

iptables is not included in the default images any more, it can be added with opkg or ImageBuilder if needed. iptables-nft, arptables-nft, ebtables-nft and xtables-nft provide the known command line interface from the old tools, but they will create nftables entries instead.

Many new devices added

OpenWrt 22.03 supports over 1550 devices. Support for over 160 new devices was added in addition to the device support by OpenWrt 21.02. OpenWrt 22.03 supports more than 10 devices capable of Wifi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) using the MediaTek MT7915 wifi chip.

  • The qoriq target for the NXP QorIQ (PowerPC) was added in OpenWrt
    22.03.
  • The bmips target for the Boardcom MIPS BCM33xx, BCM63xx and BCM7xxx
    SoCs was added.

More targets converted to DSA

The following targets or boards were migrated from swconfig to DSA with OpenWrt 22.03 in addition to the systems already migrated with OpenWrt 21.02:

  • bcm53xx: All board using this target were converted to DSA
  • lantiq: All boards using the xrx200 / vr9 SoC
  • sunxi: Bananapi Lamobo R1 (only sunxi board with switch)

Dark mode in LuCI

The LuCI bootstrap design supports a dark mode. The default design activates dark mode depending on the browser settings. Change it manually at “System” -> “System” -> “Language and Style”.

Year 2038 problem handled

OpenWrt 22.03 uses musl 1.2.x, which changed the time_t type from 32 bit to 64 bit on 32 bit systems, on 64 bit system it was always 64 bit long. When a Unix time stamp is stored in a signed 32 bit integer it will overflow on 19 January 2038. With the change to 64 bit this will happen 292 billion years later. This is a change of the musl libc ABI and needs a recompilation of all user space applications linked against musl libc. For 64 bit systems this was done when the ABI was defined many years ago, the glibc ARC ABI already has a 64 bit time_t.

Core components update

Core components have the following versions in 22.03.0-rc1:

  • Updated toolchain:
    • musl libc 1.2.3
    • glibc 2.34
    • gcc 11.2.0
    • binutils 2.37
  • Updated Linux kernel
    • 5.10.111 for all targets
  • Network:
    • hostapd 2.10, dnsmasq 2.86, dropbear 2022.82
    • cfg80211/mac80211 from kernel 5.15.33
  • System userland:
    • busybox 1.35.0

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

Full release notes and upgrade instructions are available at
https://openwrt.org/releases/22.03/notes-22.03.0-rc1

In particular, make sure to read the regressions and known issues before upgrading:
https://openwrt.org/releases/22.03/notes-22.03.0-rc1#known_issues

For a detailed list of all changes since 21.02, refer to
https://openwrt.org/releases/22.03/changelog-22.03.0-rc1

To download the 22.03.0-rc1 images, navigate to:
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/22.03.0-rc1/

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

Have fun!

The OpenWrt Community

To stay informed of new OpenWrt releases and security advisories, there are new channels available:

35 Likes
3

Hi all.
Successfully installed on

  • Netgear WNR3700v2 (ath79 generic)
  • Netgear R6220 (mt7621)
  • x86/64
    (more devices to come)

Several devices of each, and various configurations (router, AP, mesh). All working as a charm.
Thank you to everyone who contributed.

4 Likes
4

Successfully installed on

Belkin RT3200 (UBI)
Netgear R7800
TP-Link Archer A7 v5

Thank you, devs.

2 Likes
5

Which are the supported devices with Wifi 6?

1 Like
6

Belkin rt3200 is a good choice

1 Like
7

I would like to check out all of them to find one that has support for 802.11ax on both the 5GHz band and the 2.4 GHz band.

8

God dammit, right when I was planning to have my retirement party!

14 Likes
9

Installed on 4 TP-Link Acher C6 V3, works like expected

10

Firewall include rules (to run a script during firewall start or reload) such as /etc/firewall.user don't run anymore. What's the recommended replacement? I don't see anything about this in the RC1 release notes wiki page.

11

The two new targets (bmips and qoriq) do not appear to be available at the downloads link. Are the target names correct?

12

Both targets are explicity marked as source-only, which skips them from being auto-built. In case of qoriq this is intentional (new target, only a single expensive device being supported (WatchGuard Firebox M300, support for the M200 is still under development), at this point it didn't make sense to its main developer to burden the buildbots with a target like this), I'm not that closely following bmips, but would expect similar considerations.

2 Likes
13

Here is a Table of Hardware view that filters for ax support on the 2.4 and 5GHz ranges.

I myself bought the TP-Link EAP615-Wall, though I was replacing a wallplate AP to begin with.

Similarly, I was also looking for WiFi 6 on 2.4GHz.

5 Likes
14

I have the M200 and may have additional PowerPC QorIQ devices. I'll look into the source.

15

Qosify by @nbd is another major feature available in 22.03 rc1 worth mentioning.

6 Likes
16

Since I can't see any mentions, were the fixes that are supposed to address software/hardware flow offloading implemented?

Thanks

2 Likes
17

Congrats on the move to nftables, I know that had to be quite an effort between code, UI/UX, and documentation.

4 Likes
18

Does v22 still have the "cool" undocumented feature that many see on v21 with some ISPs where--unlike with versions before v21--every time they reboot the router (or even execute certain innocent ifup commands) they inexplicably get a new WAN IP? It's a lot of fun to be sure, but I'd be willing to forgo it.

19

Sysupgrade from 21.02.3 to 22.03.0-rc1, keeping configs, on an Archer C7 v2.

No internet connection, wired or wireless

No indication in the logs why.

There were no entries in the LuCI nftables section.

Rolled back to 21.02.3

1 Like
20

That sounds to me like the WAN-interface's MAC-address changes. Have you reported the bug? Have you checked, if the MAC-address changes?