OpenWrt 19.07.0-rc2 - Second Release Candidate - 30 November 2019

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 OpenWrt 19.07.0-rc2, r10775-db8345d8e4
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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.

An upgrade from OpenWrt 18.06 to OpenWrt 19.07 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 19.07.

Get OpenWrt Firmware at: https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/

The OpenWrt community is proud to announce the second release candidate of the upcoming OpenWrt 19.07 stable version series. It incorporates 126 commits since the previous release candidate 19.07.0-rc1.

With this release, the OpenWrt project brings all supported targets back to a single common kernel version and further refines and broadens existing device support. It also provides initial support for the new ath79 target, the future device tree based successor of the popular ar71xx target. For 19.07, both targets are still built, but it is recommended to switch to the ath79 target whenever possible: future releases of OpenWrt will drop support for the ar71xx target. Please read the known issues below before upgrading.

Changes in this release candidate since the previous 19.07.0-rc1 release candidate are:

• Linux kernel updated to versions 4.14.156 (from 4.14.151 in v19.07.0-rc1)
• GCC update to version 7.5.0 (from 7.4.0 in v19.07.0-rc1)
• Hostapd update to version 2.9
• Device support bugfixes for many devices
• Security fixes for curl, e2fsprogs, expat, wolfssl, intel-microcode
• Sysupgrade bugfix for an issue that could cause sysupgrade to silently fail to upgrade on ar71xx devices
• Added support for the following devices: YunCore XD4200 and A782, TP-Link Archer C60 v1/v2, ALFA Network Quad-E4G and R36M-E4G, AVM FRITZ!Repeater 1200
• Disable image generation for several devices due to insufficient flash space for the default set of packages. Images can still be built with the help of the ImageBuilder or SDK with a more minimal set of packages

When upgrading from 19.07.0-rc1, if you are affected by the sysupgrade bug on ar71xx, you need to manually edit /lib/upgrade/stage2 and add /usr/share/libubox/jshn.sh to list of files in the install_file line (around line 51). This amounts to manually applying this patch.

The 19.07 release supports WPA3. This requires the -openssl or -wolfssl variants of hostapd, wpa_supplicant or wpad. Due to their size, it is impossible to install them on devices with less than 8MB flash. It should also be noted that many existing client devices will never support WPA3, and that there are client devices that support WPA2 but cannot connect to an AP configured with WPA2+WPA3 mixed mode. Please only file bugs if you are sure the problem is not client related.

TODO: list known problematic clients?

• Sysupgrade from ar71xx to ath79 and vice versa is not officially supported, a full manual reinstall is recommended to switch targets for devices supported by both ar71xx and ath79
• Images for some device became too big to support a persistent overlay, causing such models to lose configuration after a reboot. If you experience this problem, please report the affected device in the forum and consider downgrading to OpenWrt 18.06 or using the Image Builder to pack a smaller custom image
• Some optional GUI packages crash with an error about missing “cbi.lua”, install the luci-compat package to fix these
• Possible Wi-Fi issues with ath10k-based boards. If you encounter such an issue, please file a bug report against openwrt-19.07. Please make sure the issue is not caused by WPA3. If you are using WPA3 and run into problems, revert to the encryption settings you used before upgrading to 19.07.

Highlights of this release since the previous OpenWrt 18.06 version are:

• Updated toolchain:
  • musl libc 1.1.24
  • uClibc-ng 1.0.31
  • glibc 2.27
  • gcc 7.5.0
  • binutils 2.31.1
• Updated Linux kernel
  • 4.14.156 for all targets
  • Flow offloading bugfixes
• Network userland:
  • hostapd 2.9, dnsmasq 2.80, dropbear 2019.78
  • Fixes in network and wireless configuration handling
  • Bugfixes in DHCPv6 client and server
  • WPA3 configuration support
    • Install wpad-openssl or wpad-wolfssl for WPA3 support
• System userland:
  • busybox 1.30.1
  • Sysupgrade support for backup and upgrade capability checks
  • Contains urngd, non-physical true random number generator daemon based on timing jitter
  • Bugfixes in the process manager, system message bus, embedded web server and the configuration management library
• Platform and Driver Support
  • Dropped adm5120, adm8668, ar7, au1000, ixp4xx, mcs814x, omap24xx, ppc40x, ppc44x and xburst target
  • New ath79 target that will replace the popular ar71xx target
  • Updates and new device support across all targets
• Web interface:
  • Client side rendering of views for improved performance
  • Security fixes

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

Have fun!

The OpenWrt Community