OpenWrt 23.05.6 - Service Release

Release and security announcements
1

Hi,

The OpenWrt community is proud to announce the newest stable release of the OpenWrt 23.05 stable series. It improves device support and brings a few bug fixes including security fixes.

Download firmware images using the OpenWrt Firmware Selector:

Download firmware images directly from our download servers:

OpenWrt 23.05 is EOL

The OpenWrt 23.05 series is end of life according to the OpenWrt security policy. The last release from the OpenWrt 23.05 series is 23.05.6, after this date we will not provide any updates for OpenWrt 23.05, not even for severe security problems. We encourage everyone to upgrade to OpenWrt 24.10 which will be supported till 2026.

Main changes between OpenWrt 23.05.5 and OpenWrt 23.05.6

Device support

  • Added devices:
    • ath79: Huawei AP6010DN
    • ath79: MikroTik RouterBOARD 750 r2 (hEX lite)
    • ath79: Sophos AP15C
    • ramips: netis N6
  • ath79: ZTE MF286: fix 5GHz on QCA9886
  • ath79: add extended AR9344 reset sequence
  • ipq40xx: Aruba AP-303H: Fix PSE GPIO pin
  • ipq40xx: Meraki MR33 and MR74: fix MAC address
  • mediatek: Xiaomi Router AX3000T: Add support for Winbond W25N01KV flash
  • ramips: TP-Link RE200 v1 and RE210 v1: Fix booting stuck issue
  • octeon: ubnt-edgerouter: fix sysupgrade config backup/restore

Various fixes and improvements

  • iptables: backport "nft: track each register individually" from 1.9
  • wifi-scripts: Fix parsing of Capabilities

Core components update

  • Update Linux from 5.15.167 to 5.15.189
  • Update mac80211 from 6.1.110-1 to 6.1.145-1
  • Update wireless-regdb from 2024.07.04 to 2025.07.10
  • Update openssl from 3.0.15 to 3.0.16
  • Update mbedtls from 2.28.9 to 2.28.10
  • Update wolfssl from 5.7.2 to 5.7.6
  • Update ca-certificates from 20230311 to 20241223
  • Update jsonfilter from 2024-01-23 to 2025-04-18
  • Update libxml from 2.12.5 to 2.14.5

Upgrading to 23.05.6

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, MR8300 and WHW01 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.

Known issues

  • lantiq/xrx200 target shows error messages in DSA switch configuration of the integrated GSWIP switch. (see: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/13200)
  • OpenWrt 23.05.6 was signed with the wrong signing keys. The keys from OpenWrt snapshot were used for OpenWrt 23.05.6, OpenWrt 23.05.5, OpenWrt 23.05.4, OpenWrt 23.05.3, OpenWrt 23.05.2, OpenWrt 23.05.0 and the release candidates. A later OpenWrt 23.05 service release will use a different key.

See up to date information here:

https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/notes-23.05.6#known_issues

Full release notes and upgrade instructions are available at

https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/notes-23.05.6

In particular, make sure to read the regressions and known issues before upgrading:

https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/notes-23.05.6#known_issues

For a detailed list of all changes since 23.05.5, refer to

https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/changelog-23.05.6

To download the 23.05.6 images, navigate to:

https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.6/targets/

Use OpenWrt Firmware Selector to download:

https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=23.05.6

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:

9 Likes
OpenWrt 23.05.5 - Service Release
2

Issue resolved 2025-08-21 09:41Z

@hauke @aparcar

The targets file, https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.6/.targets.json, has not been generated for some reason. This causes auc, owut and LuCI Attended Sysupgrade issues.

$ auc -c
auc/0.3.2-1
Server:    https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org
Running:   23.05.5 r24106-10cc5fcd00 on mediatek/mt7622 (linksys,e8450-ubi)
WARNING: cannot determing currently running branch.
Invalid argument (22)

EDIT, forgot to add Firmware Selector, whose message is same as owut's:

Unsupported target: x86/64. The requested target was either dropped, is still being built or is not supported by the selected version. Please check the forums or try again later.
3

I get a “Failed to fetch” error when trying to access any 23.05.6 image in the firmware selector.

edit: seems to be fixed. thanks!

4

So, will there be a 23.05.7 as the above states the key issue will be fixed in a further service release?

1 Like
5

Most likely no.

  1. this issue is running since development and it doesn’t prevent installation and use.
  2. 23.05 is EOL as stated.
3 Likes
6

Probably the last best version for all the old routers OpenWrt was created to resurrect from the trash heap. Pretty solid code and it should be operation for a long time to come. I think of all the routers still in operation with factory firmware that’s way more than 10 years old and still operating flawlessly. Considering all the time and effort by so many great people who developed OpenWrt I just want to thank you all. The 23.05.6 is the peak accomplishment of all that work. Sincere gratitude.

6 Likes
7

Agreed.

I still have some 10y+ vintage devices. It is indeed remarkable that such HW could run modern SW. I’ll miss 23.05, it was a great OS. I had shivers debugging kernel 5.15 on the MR8300.

Thanks to the devs team, especially for this vintage release.

1 Like
8

It must be a consequence of "Copy and paste".

4 Likes
9

@hauke

A later OpenWrt 23.05 service release will use a different key.

Since it is extremely unlikely that there will be another OpenWrt 23.05 service release (as the series is end of life), can you please revise this sentence in the first post and in the Wiki?

Thank you very much.

10

Hello,

It’s been 4 days since the release of 23.05.6, but none of the imagebuilder containers for its targets had yet been created (with the exception of ramips target, which was created manually, as a response to somebody’s complaint for that particular target).

For example, the mediatek-filogic target container is missing, so I’ve been getting errors when trying to build a 23.05.6 image with my custom package selection, both via router ASU and via firmware selector website.

Would be nice if this issue is addressed and fixed.

Thank you,

R

Screenshot_20250824_181326_Samsung Internet
Screenshot_20250824_181326_Samsung Internet1079Ă—2007 263 KB

1 Like
11

Whatever EOL means, ath10k is broken in 24.10, and here in release notes a properly signed build is promised.

2 Likes
12

All devices with ath10k, or some?

I’m running 24.10.2 + ath10k device (DAP-2610) I have no issues :thinking: (so far).

1 Like
13

If you read back all previous 23.05.x release notes, you’ll notice that each version stated that this will be solved in a later release. It has never been done.

23.05.0

23.05.2

23.05.3

23.05.4

23.05.5

And so is 23.05.6 …

2 Likes
14

I understand it is a pencil slip, but new release is promised at this time….

1 Like
15

A week has passed since the release.

Still ASU and firmware selector with custom packages for 23.05.6 do not work.

16

I wonder what’s the hold-up with the 23.05.06 imagebuilders.

17

The imagebuilders I've checked are all fine. ASU is not working, though, as no docker containers were built https://github.com/openwrt/docker/issues/182#issuecomment-3224478911

3 Likes
18

ASU should all be working now with 23.05.6, thanks to @robimarko restarting the container build job...

4 Likes
19

23.05.6 is still gold for my TP-Link Archer C7 v4 and A7 v5.

Will not move to 24.10 unless the ath10k can reach same stability level as 23.05.

1 Like
20

I'm running DAP-2610 (ath10k) with 24.10.3 with no issues (in 24.10.2 indeed).
What kind of problems are you talking about?