The first stable release of the OpenWrt 22.03 stable release series is now available. Since the previous OpenWrt 21.02 release branch, this release contains over 3800 commits and has been in development for about a year. The OpenWrt Project is a Linux operating system for embedded devices that replaces various vendor-supplied firmware for wireless routers and non-networking devices.

Highlights of OpenWrt 22.03.0

Firewall4 firewall based on nftables

Firewall4 is now replacedfirewall3Be the default firewall configuration software in OpenWrt images. Firewall4 uses nftables instead of iptables to configure Linux network filters.

The UCI configuration interface of Firewall4 is consistent with the previous firewall configuration interface. Legacy firewall configurations migrate seamlessly to firewall4 and use nftables. However, custom iptables command options do not work in Firewall4.

iptablesNo longer installed by default in firmware. If needed, you can install it via opkg or ImageBuilder.iptables-nft,arptables-nft,ebtables-nftandxtables-nftThe same interface as the previous command can be provided using nftables.

New device support

Compared with OpenWrt 21.02, OpenWrt 22.03 has added support for about 180 devices. OpenWrt 22.03 now supports over 1580 devices. OpenWrt 22.03 supports over 15 Wifi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) devices using MediaTek MT7915 master.

• qoriq: NXP QorIQ (PowerPC) is supported in OpenWrt 22.03

• bmips: Boardcom MIPS BCM33xx, BCM63xx and BCM7xxx SoCs are also supported.

More devices migrate to DSA

The following devices were also migrated from swconfig to DSA in OpenWrt 22.03:

• bcm53xx: all devices

• lantiq: devices using xrx200 / vr9 SoC

• sunxi: Bananapi Lamobo R1 (only sunxi devices with switches)

LuCI’s dark mode

The LuCI bootstrap interface now supports dark mode, and its default configuration is to follow the browser settings. This configuration can be modified in “System” → “System” → “Language and Style”.

Year 2038 problem solved

OpenWrt 22.03 uses musl 1.2.x on 32-bit systemstime_tThe type was changed from 32 bits to 64 bits long, and the length of 64 bit systems was already 64 bits long. When a Unix timestamp is stored on a signed 32-bit integer, it overflows on January 19, 2038. After changing the type to 64-bit, the overflow occurs in 200 billion years. This change modifies the ABI interface of musl libc, so all user programs that link against musl libc need to be recompiled.For 64-bit systems, this work was done many years ago; glibc on ARC’stime_tIt has long been 64 bits long.

Core component upgrade

In 22.03.0-rc6, the following core components have been upgraded:

• Toolchain upgrade:

  • musl-libc 1.2.3

  • glibc 2.34

  • gcc 11.2.0

  • binutils 2.37

• Linux kernel

• network:

  • hostapd 2.10, dnsmasq 2.86, dropbear 2022.82

  • cfg80211/mac80211 for Linux kernel 5.15.58

• System user program:

In addition, other software upgrades can refer to the detailed update log.

Upgrade to 22.03.0

You can use the system upgrade tool to upgrade your device from 21.02 to 22.03, and in most cases your settings will be preserved; you can also upgrade from the previous 22.03.0 preview to the official version.

Upgrading from 19.07 to 22.03 using the system upgrade tool is not supported.

A legacy swconfig configuration cannot be upgraded to a DSA configuration. In this case, the system upgrade tool will refuse to upgrade with the following error:Image version mismatch. image 1.1 device 1.0 Please wipe config during upgrade (force required) or reinstall. Config cannot be migrated from swconfig to DSA Image check failed

More details can be found in the release announcement.