[SOLVED] An issue upgrading wireless x64 from 24.10 to 25.12

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I've noticed a strange hiccup in upgrading x64 devices with wireless componentry from 24.10 to 25.12. I've upgraded several of those since 25.12 first came out, and it seems to be consistent. Wired-only devices are not affected.

Here's how it happens. I start with the expected:

owut upgrade -V 25.12

The process starts, the manifest is checked, the build commences... and then, it exits with an impossible package selection error. The impossibly selected package is... (drumroll) hostapd. The workaround I came up with is, do a two-step.

First, upgrade leaving hostapd out:

owut upgrade -V 25.12 -r hostapd

Then, after the device upgrades, install hostapd in the usual way:

apk update && apk add hostapd
reboot

In the grand scheme of things, not a huge deal, but a new user might find this note helpful...

2

Yeah, that's an issue with the hostapd*/wpad*/wpa-supplicant* packaging. Here's what I suggested until it gets fixed: Can't upgrade 24.10 -> 25.12 - #8 by efahl

3

Thank you! I think this is better than what I worked out. So let me repeat it for future readers:

owut upgrade -V 25.12 --remove hostapd --add hostapd-mbedtls --force

I am marking this solved.

4

The mbedtls version is about 80k bigger, which for x86 basically "nobody cares", but other devices this might make a difference. I'm still unclear as to what the non-TLS hostapd does for encryption...

$ apk query --format yaml hostapd hostapd-mbedtls --fields name,file-size,depends
# 2 items
- name: hostapd
  file-size: 531560
  depends: # 13 items
    - hostapd-common=2026.04.02~b004de0b-r1
    - libblobmsg-json20260523
    - libc
    - libnl-tiny1
    - libubus20260523
    - libucode20230711
    - libudebug
    - ucode
    - ucode-mod-fs
    - ucode-mod-nl80211
    - ucode-mod-rtnl
    - ucode-mod-ubus
    - ucode-mod-uloop
- name: hostapd-mbedtls
  file-size: 610077
  depends: # 14 items
    - hostapd-common=2026.04.02~b004de0b-r1
    - libblobmsg-json20260523
    - libc
    - libmbedtls21
    - libnl-tiny1
    - libubus20260523
    - libucode20230711
    - libudebug
    - ucode
    - ucode-mod-fs
    - ucode-mod-nl80211
    - ucode-mod-rtnl
    - ucode-mod-ubus
    - ucode-mod-uloop
5

I don't think we have this issue on other platforms... Do we?

Calls out to libmbedtls, which is there anyway? It's a dependency of px5g-mbedtls, and px5g-mbedtls is a dependency of luci-ssl.

6

I just remembered something... A few times, I've seen this situation:

  • snapshot; luci added for convenience as an afterthought
  • hostapd is present
  • wireless hardware works, but no encryption options are available
  • it all gets cured by explicitly installing luci-ssl; it drags in px5g-mbedtls, and px5g-mbedtls brings libmbedtls with it...
7

You likely don't see it on the "real wifi" targets because the default package almost everywhere is wpad-basic-mbedtls, so it's already resolved by one of the non-name-only packages, which all work fine. It's only when you're on a non-wifi (x86, armsr) device and installed wpad, hostapd or wpa-supplicant and not one of the variants that you'll see this issue.

Or you're on a wifi device and have explicitly switched to one of those non-TLS packages. For these, it's much more likely that you've replaced -basic- with full wpad-mbedtls or maybe a mesh variant, but that works fine, too.

And, yeah, you're almost certainly going to have libmbedtls installed due to all its other dependents, most notably the default package manager apk-mbedtls.