After more than a year of development, a significant release of the OpenWrt distribution 24.10.0, which is developed for networking devices such as routers, switches, and access points, has been presented. OpenWrt supports 1970 devices and offers a build system that simplifies cross-compilation and the creation of custom builds. Such builds allow for the formation of ready-made firmware with the desired set of pre-installed packages, optimized for specific tasks. Ready-made builds have been published for 39 target platforms (36 platforms were supported in the previous branch).
Key changes in OpenWrt 24.10:
- Support for TLS 1.3 is enabled by default, implemented via an update to the mbedtls library to version 3.6.
- Support for ACL (POSIX Access Control List) and security attributes has been activated for devices with larger Flash memory across all file systems. This change affects devices for which the small_flash flag is not set. Currently, small_flash is specified for ath79/tiny, bcm47xx/legacy, lantiq/ase, lantiq/xrx200_legacy, lantiq/xway_legacy, ramips/mt76x8, ramips/rt288x, ramips/rt305x, and ramips/rt3883 platforms.
- For devices with larger Flash memory, support for MPTCP (MultiPath TCP), an extension of the TCP protocol for delivering TCP packets simultaneously over multiple routes through different network interfaces, has been included in the kernel.
- Support for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) has been improved and initial support for Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) has been added.
- The performance of the lldpd background process with the implementation of the LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol) has been enhanced.
- Support for more than 100 new devices has been added, including the proprietary wireless router OpenWrt One, developed by the OpenWrt community. The total number of supported devices has reached 1970.
- The d1 and starfive platforms have been added for devices based on the SoC AllWinner D1 and StarFive JH71x0 (7100/7110), which use RISC-V architecture.
- The ixp4xx platform has been added for SoC Intel XScale IXP4xx based on ARM architecture.
- The loongarch64 platform has been added for devices with processors based on the LoongArch architecture.
- The stm32 platform has been added for SoC STMicroelectronics STM32.
- The ath25 (Atheros ieee80211g with 16 MB RAM), bcm63xx (Broadcom DSL MIPS, replaced by the bmips platform), octeontx (Octeon-TX CN80XX/CN81XX), and oxnas (PLXTECH/Oxford NAS782x/OX8xx) platforms have been removed. The ipq807x platform has been renamed to qualcommax.
- Ready-made builds have been formed for the qoriq platform (SoC NXP QorIQ based on PowerPC architecture).
- The translation of target platforms continues with the use of the DSA (Distributed Switch Architecture) kernel subsystem, providing tools for configuring and managing cascades of interconnected Ethernet switches, using mechanisms to set up standard network interfaces (iproute2, ifconfig). DSA can be used to configure ports and VLANs instead of the previously offered swconfig tool, but not all switch drivers currently support DSA. In this release, DSA is utilized for the ipq806x platform (SoC Qualcomm Atheros IPQ806X). Support for the Airoha AN8855 DSA switch has been added (Xiaomi AX3000T, used in Mediatek and Airoha switches).
- Package versions have been updated, including musl 1.2.5, glibc 2.38, gcc 13.3.0, binutils 2.42, hostapd from September 2024, dnsmasq 2.90, dropbear ssh 2024.86.
- The Linux kernel has been updated to version 6.6.73 with the wireless stack cfg80211/mac80211 ported from kernel 6.12.6. (The previous branch provided kernel 5.15 with the wireless stack from kernel 6.1).
- Despite migrating the project to the APK package manager, the OpenWrt 24.10 branch continues to use the OPKG package manager. The switch to APK has only been implemented in the 'main' branch, which will serve as the foundation for the next significant release of OpenWrt.
- When transitioning from OpenWrt 23.05 on Xiaomi AX3200, Redmi AX6S, Linksys E8450, Belkin RT3200, and Zyxel GS1900 devices, there are issues with the update. Users of these devices should take note of specific recommendations.
Source: opennet.ru
